Monster's Playground
by manic-intent
Summary: Postgame, Full spoilers. The phone rings when Alex walks by Central Park, and old ghosts don't seem to stay dead for very long. Cross x Alex
1. Chapter 1

[A/N: Prototype wikia has so, so much speculation, lol. Great fic base.

For gu_tango, who helped out a lot with plot details that I had totally forgotten about and was very patient with my constant annoying questions (like "how did Cross contact Alex again?" and lots and lots of other questions about Cross) and who bombarded me with Cross x Alex doujin over the last few days. Thanks. : )]

Monster's Playground

Chapter 1

I

Humanity was a virus far more insidious than what it was; two days and five hours from achieving his revenge, and the living virus codenamed Blacklight still pervasively thought of itself as a _he_, still breathed, hurt, hated and cared, thought of itself intrinsically as _Alex Mercer_. Alex had been the first body he had copied, instinctively, and just as instinctively, he felt a deep-seated unease at using any other shape.

Two days five hours and fifteen minutes from his revenge, and Alex decided, perched on a rusted billboard over a building scarred four days back from a wayward strike package, that he was tired.

Alex Mercer the human had intentionally released a virus that he had known would murder millions, in one of the most crowded cities in the world. Alex Mercer the virus had tried – and succeeded – in suppressing the outbreak. Old habits, perhaps, or residual guilt; Alex still wasn't quite sure. The memories of scores of the consumed provided no clarity on what it meant to be human. Below, chaos yet reigned on the streets; outside of the slowly expanding military zones, the lawless districts were rife with murders, lootings and rapes as humans fought over dwindling supplies.

Disgusted, Alex leaped out into space, willing himself forward, landing with a crunch and claws dug into concrete, running over the rooftop and leaping back into space. This semblance of flight was the sole, exhilarating joy that Alex took in his current existence, the air that roared past and dragged at his clothes, high enough up above the ground, above the stench of rot and living decay.

Central Park was quiet. Difficult to defend with bulky vehicles and subject to potential attack from all sides, the military had temporarily abandoned the park to the remaining infected, which haunted the lawns, hissing and occasionally fighting amongst themselves.

Alex skirted the park, on alert. Dana was at Ragland's, and the doctor had told him to 'get some of her things' while waiting for her to wake up – likely more as an excuse to get him out of the hospital rather than any real sense of concern for Dana's comfort, but it was as good a purpose as any for now.

Keeping his memorized map of the city in mind, Alex was planning out his route when the public payphone he walked past began to ring.

Flinching, Alex looked around hastily, then under the payphone. Stuck to its metal base was a familiar, slim black shape.

So the Hunter had survived. Somehow, Alex wasn't entirely surprised – after all, _he_ had regenerated from almost nothing, after being caught in the blast. Reaching under the payphone, Alex snagged the mobile.

"What do you want?"

"You're still alive. Good." The Hunter was still using Cross' voice, if without the modulator. "I have a proposition."

"So do I. Tell me where you are, and I'll make sure you're dead this time when I'm through."

"Has your 'sister' woken up yet?"

Alex growled, as the skin under his nails crawled, itching to warp in to claws. "None of your damned business."

"She has a natural semi-immunity. She's fighting off the infection, but she might not wake up; not without a serum. I can arrange that for you."

"I know what you are. If you think I'm going to buy into any more of your-"

"I know that Doctor Ragland is your acquaintance. Ask him for the nanotech stabilizer, a syringe of it. In return, I'll give you the serum. You can have Ragland test it if you don't trust me. When you have the stabilizer, call me back on this mobile."

"Ragland is making a vaccine for my sister. I don't need your help."

"How long will the vaccine take? And how are you to know there won't be side effects?" 'Cross' pointed out calmly. "Talk to Ragland. Call me back when you have the stabilizer. Cross out."

One of humanity's most pervasive traits, Alex felt, as he stared at the black, inert mobile phone in his palm, was its original sin, _curiosity_.

II

Ragland looked unsurprised to see him. The Doctor's eyes were red-rimmed and puffy from lack of sleep, and he smelled of bone-deep weariness, old blood, and the faint thread of fear that Alex was used to among humans who understood him for what he was.

Most humans.

"Was wondering when you'll be back," Ragland muttered, examining a slide under a microscope. Beside him, on a bloody autopsy table, was a naked male cadaver, sliced neatly open. The lab stank of formaldehyde, blood, sweat and the rotting contents of digestive organs.

"Where's Dana?"

"Still sleeping." Ragland said, looking guarded. "She was exposed to the virus, Alex. Not a big exposure," he added hastily, as Alex took a step forward, "Not enough to turn. I'm synthesizing a vaccine based on what you brought to me the last time, for your cure, but-"

"But you need more genetic material?" Alex said, resigned, Cross' offer weighing on his mind.

"No. Just more time." The doctor placed the slide carefully onto a boxed set, and picked up another one. "Whatever you did, I hear the infection in Manhattan's been contained. Being cleaned up." Grudgingly, "Good work."

"If you say so." Alex tried to analyze the sudden, faint sensation of warmth in his abdominal area at the praise, and as he tried to dredge context out from the stolen memories archived in his mind, the doctor continued to chatter.

"Can't say I agreed with your methods," Ragland peered into the microscope again, "But I can't say there weren't mitigating circumstances. I don't have anything for you to do right now."

"I was asked," Alex said, watching the doctor carefully, "For a 'nanotech stabilizer'. A syringe of it."

Ragland's fingers froze over the slides for a heartbeat, and then he straightened, pushing his glasses up his nose. "And who asked you for one?"

"One of the infected." Briefly, Alex related what he knew about Cross – and the incident on the ship when he had realized that Cross was actually the Supreme Hunter.

" 'Supreme Hunter'? Ran out of inspiration for names, did we?" Ragland turned back to his microscope. "An infected wouldn't ask for the nanotech stabilizer. I wasn't aware that the Wiseman team was in Manhattan. But I guess it was only to be expected."

"Explain."

"The Wiseman team consists of modified Blackwatch soldiers. Not exactly like the supersoldiers, but similar. They're search, kill and suppression elites, made for hunting runners or dealing with outbreaks, enhanced by the most cutting edge nanotech available. If they're consumed, the nanotech is meant to cause a brief and very fatal chemical reaction with the devourer's nervous systems, and then self-destruct. It's to prevent any runners or infected from assuming a Wiseman team member's enhanced training and specialized memories. It's also to ensure that they complete their objective at any cost."

"And the stabilizer?"

"I was part of the team that developed it," Ragland said wearily. "Sometimes the nanotech wears down, becomes self-hostile. Causes pain, hallucinations, loss of control. The stabilizer suppresses it for another period of time. The entirety of the Wiseman team is hooked up on stabilizers. It's their leash. An infected wouldn't ask for the stabilizer, because an infected would already be dead."

"The Supreme Hunter isn't an ordinary infected." Alex frowned. "And it consumed Cross."

"Obviously the nanotech's killswitch didn't work on it. But why would it want the nanotech in place? If it can reform and rebuild itself from base material, it can reject the nanotech." Ragland pointed out. "And it won't need the nanotech's enhanced speed, strength and senses. It's more likely that you ran into someone else from the Wiseman team, posing as Cross. They're a well-trained extraction strike team. Voice modulators are the least of their abilities."

"Then it's possible that they have a serum that can help Dana."

"I'm not aware of a synthesized cure by GENTEK," Ragland said slowly, looking thoughtful. "But I left GENTEK a long time ago. If anyone down at ground zero has a proper, localized cure, it'd be a member of the Wiseman team."

"So you're saying I should trust this person."

"I'm not. But I'm sure that you're more than equipped to address any… eventualities." Ragland shot Alex's fingers a meaningful stare. "Go back to the GENTEK building. You probably have more recent memories than I regarding where their stores are. I'll give you a shopping list. Come back with the materials and I'll prepare a syringe of the stabilizer for you."

"All right." At the worst, if this were a ruse, the world would just be less one further Wiseman soldier. "Can I see Dana?"

Ragland scribbled something on a journal, tore it off, and handed it over. "You want to see your sister, she's down the back, but since her immune system's already busy fighting the virus, you might want to, hell, wash down first or something. I would suggest suiting up."

Translation: You are a host of infectious zombie-inducing diseases; please do not go near sick people you care about.

Alex tucked the scrap of paper into his jacket. "Maybe later. I'll go get the things you need."

"Might want to do it quickly," Ragland said mildly, scribbling in the journal again. "If whoever it is needs you to _bring_ him the stabilizer, he might be a little far gone."

III

Breaking into GENTEK was the easy part. The facility was crawling with GENTEK personnel, slowly sifting through the rubble. After Greene's accidental release, it looked like the facility had been compromised by infected, possibly driven by Greene's instinctive wish for vengeance on her tormentors, and rotting gore and fleshy creep on the walls fought a slowly losing battle with GENTEK personnel.

Alex had absorbed the guise of a security guard, cradling a rifle in his arms as he ascended a stairwell, dredging stolen memories for the location and passcodes to GENTEK's stores. Surveyors and construction workers squeezing past ignored him, likely assuming that he was on patrol; security seemed thankfully lax. The guards were mostly on the perimeter, watching for any infected.

Five floors and two corridors later, Alex found himself alone in a partially blocked off corridor. Debris from a partially collapsed ceiling and overturned desks sealed off the rest of the memorized route. Irritated, Alex looked around him quickly, then dropped the rifle, scaling cracked concrete and twisted fingers of metal up to the next floor. Crushed tiles, a dripping sink and an overturned refrigerator indicated that this was once a communal kitchen.

Alex glanced at the closed door, listened for voices, then manipulated biomass into his fists, turning his bones wider, denser, his flesh hardening into overlapping plates. The first slam of his fist against the edge of the floor crushed tiles into powder. By the fifth, he had managed to smash a large enough gap between the collapsed roof and wall debris to squeeze past into the rest of the corridor, but he knew from faint shouts that he had attracted attention.

Reverting his arms back to normal, Alex darted past vaguely familiar offices and cubicles, to a locked storage room. The first keycode he pressed in out of habit – his own – caused him to flinch as an alarm started to peal, picking up quickly in an answering echo around the building.

Great _work_, genius.

Swearing under his breath, Alex reformed his arm back to the biomass fist and punched the closed silver doors until they skewed open, revealing a room crammed with rows of shelves containing alphabetically labeled pills and drugs. Reverting back and twisting through, Alex ran an eye over the list of materials and began taking bottles off the well-stocked shelves, slotting them into one of the padded carrybags lined in a corner. He took as many as two bags would carry, slinging them on his shoulders as he stepped out of the room.

The voices were much closer now, likely investigating the gap in the floor above. Alex lined up against the nearest glass window, concentrated biomass into his heels, and smashed through.

Four blocks and two faces later, the wail of the alarm fading to nothing behind him, Alex slowed down from his dead run over and across the rooftops, and turned to head towards the hospital.

IV

Ragland had taken a surprisingly short time to mix up the synthesizer, muttering to himself over sterilized lab equipment all the time, until he had finally handed Alex a colorless fluid in a corked syringe. Alex had made sure that he was nowhere near the hospital when he used the callback function on the phone.

While listening to the ringing, he stared at the edge of the Riverside park, which dipped into the Hudson river. The park – and much of the walk towards it – had been quiet, shops either boarded up or smashed and looted, apartment blocks deathly silent and scarred with shells and claw marks.

Dana had still been 'stable' and 'still needed more time', Ragland had called it, doctor speak for 'not in danger, but I have no idea why she isn't waking up'. Alex wasn't sure why he – the Blacklight virus – still _cared_. Reflex, perhaps. Or the pervasive human need to be _needed_-

After the second attempt, the Wiseman soldier finally picked up. His voice sounded shallower than before, even through the Cross-modulator. "You have the stabilizer?"

"Yeah."

"Good." A shuddering breath. "Judging from the locator I put in your mobile, I'm not far from you. Grant's tomb. Visitor center. You might want to make it here fast, before I smash the serum."

Irritated at the threat, Alex sprinted in the direction of the domed tomb, circling it once he was close. The tomb had been left unscathed by the mayhem, ignored by both people and the infected alike. Alex ignored the stately, granite and marble structure, instead stalking towards the shuttered gift shop behind it, a squat block of glass promising tacky miniature keychains and shirts. The door was locked, and with the help of some concentrated biomass, Alex kicked it open, then instinctively formed his left arm into a bullet shield as a red laser point staggered up his chest.

In the darkness behind overturned shelves and tables, there was the faint gleam of light reflecting from the lens of a rifle sight, then a snort. "Come over here."

Warping his shield into the double blade in open threat, Alex did so, narrowing his eyes. In infected vision, there was a man-shaped form curled up against a shelf, neither in the flecked outline of a human or the colors of an infected, but something else, white and pale. A torchlight flickered on, throwing harsh shadows against a man in a gas mask and dark fatigues, a sniper rifle on his lap; a broad-shouldered man, muscular almost to the point of being heavily built, his chest heaving shallowly as though in pained breaths. Gloved fingers were clawing ineffectively at his jacket sleeve, trying with shaking fingers to roll it up.

Alex sighed, kneeling down and slicing the sleeve up to the man's elbow, then warping his blade back to fingers and holding the arm still as he drew the syringe out from its velvet pack and uncorked it. Dr. Mercer's memories found the vein for him, and practiced fingers shot up the stabilizer. The man shuddered violently in his grasp for a moment, dislodging the syringe, then slumped back against the shelf with a hollow sigh.

"Vest pocket, top right," the man rasped in Cross' voice. "The serum."

Alex located the vial of red fluid in the buttoned pocket, and wrapped it carefully in the velvet pack that had held the syringe, tucking it into the inner pocket of his jacket. "If it's a trick, I'll come back and kill you."

The man snorted, and for a moment, Alex was tempted to kill him anyway. He could smell blood; the Wiseman soldier was bleeding slowly through filthy makeshift bandages that wrapped over his left hand and over his left shoulder. Even wrapped up as the wounds were, Alex could identify the most likely source of the massive bites. "Are you going to turn?"

"The Wiseman team is immune."

"Then why are you carrying a _serum_?"

"Allies. Taggart. Others." The soldier was forcibly trying to slow his own breathing.

"You've lost a lot of blood. How long have you been here?"

"Nanotech," the soldier said, with a wet gasp, then grabbed at Alex's wrists as he reached for the mask, too weak to do much but dig nails into his skin as he formed fingers into claws and sliced the straps off, pulling it away.

"_Cross_?"

"Who in the world did you think it was?" Specialist Cross' eyes were glazed, but he still managed to frown. "Listen, Taggart-"

"I should have done more than just decapitate you," Alex growled, leaping back and onto his feet, biomass crawling up his wrists.

Cross stared at him blankly. "Decapitate?"

"On that ship!"

"Mercer," Cross said slowly, dryly, "I sure as _hell_ would have _remembered_ being _decapitated_."

Maybe you reformed." Alex said, if now a little doubtfully. Why wasn't the Supreme Hunter healing? And if Ragland was right, why would the Supreme Hunter absorb the nanotech? "You've been here all this while?"

"Few days. Team overwhelmed during the evac. Fought this… creature. Took a bite out of my shoulder and some of my fingers and smacked me off the building. Landed… some glass, some wire mesh… somehow managed to crawl someplace safe. I take it my team wasn't so lucky." Cross' voice was getting slowly steadier, as the stabilizer did its work. "Listen. Taggart might be planning on nuking the city. The coordinates of the ship are-"

It seemed that the Supreme Hunter had somehow managed to replicate Cross from just a minimum amount of genetic material. But then again, Alex reminded himself, _he_ had regenerated from a crow, after being caught in a nuclear blast. He wasn't exactly a good judge of what was possible.

"Taggart's gone, and the nuke's taken care of."

Cross looked so surprised that Alex couldn't help but smirk. "_Your_ doing?"

"Yeah." He wasn't above the human tendency towards pride.

"Not bad," Cross decided, gruffly, then he narrowed his eyes and scrabbled for his rifle as Alex hauled him up and slung him over his shoulder. "Jesus! Mercer, what the fuck do you think you're _doing_?"

"Shut up and stop moving or I'll throw you into the river," Alex said curtly. "I'm taking you to Ragland to get patched up. And then you're going to give me some answers."

tbc


	2. Chapter 2

[A/N: I seem to be moving more or less in a large fandom to smaller and smaller and smaller fandom trend. ^^'' AC has grown enough such that I can be picky about what I read, thankfully : ) But Cross x Alex Prototype? I'll read anything. :/ So far, found 4 fics, 2 from 4chan. so few! And it's been a year!]

Monster's Playground

Chapter 2

I

Under the Kevlar jacket and vest, Cross wore an impressive array of scars – a gunshot wound on the top right shoulder, large ridges of tissue over his ribs from what looked like claws, smaller sets of long-healed deep scratches, and semi-circular rings of pitted flesh that looked like bite marks. Cross was silent while Ragland cleaned and stitched up his wounds, the only hint of his pain his tightened jaw, and he smiled thinly as he noticed Alex staring.

"The last runner put up a fight."

"They're _all_ from the runner?"

"No." Cross said curtly, suppressing a wince as Ragland tied off his stitching.

"Doesn't he need blood?" Alex turned on the doctor. "He's been bleeding for a few days." Other than a drip that ran from an arm to a packet of some drug cocktail that Ragland had specially mixed up, the doctor had done nothing more than clean up the wounds. "I need him alive. For now."

"The nanotech will deal with that." Ragland jerked a thumb at the drip. "That's an amplifier to speed it up. Give him another week, and the flesh on his shoulders would have regenerated to just another ugly set of scars. Doubt the fingers will, though. The amplifier will make you need another stabilizer shot soon, so I've got another dose of that ready over there," he tilted his head at the corked syringe on the operating table propped up against the hospital bed. "I think you can shoot yourself up now."

"Yeah." Cross' arms were both riddled with needle scars, like an addict's. "Thanks."

"I should have known it was you, Cross," Ragland grumbled, sorting swabs, thread, needle, scissors and disinfectant onto a tray. "No one else I know would have had the balls to give Zeus orders."

Cross rolled his uninjured shoulder into a nonchalant shrug. "We had the same objectives."

Ragland sniffed, unimpressed. "I'll stay and chat, but I have actual patients-"

"Go and test the serum," Alex interrupted impatiently.

"-which I need a serum for," Ragland continued mildly, evenly, and left the room, his chin and tray of bloodied tools held high. Cross began to chuckle once the glass doors swung closed.

"Attitude like that was why he could never work in GENTEK. Brilliant man, though."

"He's still afraid of me," Alex said, unimpressed. "_You_ aren't."

"I've killed someone like you before, Mercer. Gone through hell with the rest of the team in other outbreaks. There's no room for fear." Cross tapped meaningfully at the massive scars on his ribs. "Does Dana Mercer know what you really are?"

"No. And if I can, I'll keep it from her." Alex said instantly.

"Why?"

"I don't want to hurt her." The answer felt so _natural_. Dana was the only one who cared. _No matter what happened, you're still my brother_. He wanted that to be true. Even now.

"Alex Mercer was a cold bastard who used his sister and then abandoned her for years, knowing that GENTEK knew he was using her," Cross pointed out mildly. "I don't think he would have faced down Greene and the infected for her."

"What are you trying to say?" Alex growled, narrowing his eyes.

"Nothing. Just an observation." Cross drawled, irritatingly, shifting on the hospital bed. "So, were you going to bring me up to date?"

"I was going to ask you some _questions_."

"Which I can answer better once I know your context," Cross said, so-very-reasonably.

Alex's fingers curled briefly, but he could see the logic. Grudgingly, he explained, up from the evacuation of Manhattan to disposing of the nuke. Cross was silent the whole while, his eyes a little unfocused, absently rubbing at the needle track scars on his right arm. "Funny."

"What is?"

"That thing – the Supreme Hunter – turned into me and did more or less what I was going to do anyway." Cross seemed amused. "Even knew how to find and use one of my spare phones to contact you."

"So you would have tried to kill me on the ship?"

"I would have tried to kill you eventually," Cross said frankly. "Mission, purpose of existence, nanotech stabilizer leash…?"

"Doesn't seem like you like it."

"You mean, do I like having to shoot myself full of drugs once a month or go into withdrawal? Fuck, let me think about that." Cross scratched at his chin archly. "Not to mention sometimes they give it to us as late as possible, just to 'see how the nanotech reacts'. Fun times. But once I'm healed up, I'll have to go back."

"Ragland can make the stabilizer."

"Yeah, exchanging a polka dotted leash for a striped one. You can't convince me that Ragland won't listen to you if you twist his arm a little. He's hiding it well – he always has – but he's shit scared of you, Mercer. I'll take my chances with Blackwatch."

"I don't understand you."

"Replace the 'you' with 'humans' and you'd be just about right," Cross said cryptically. "What are you going to do next?"

"You just said that you were still going to try to kill me and rejoin Blackwatch. Why should I tell you?"

"So?" Cross, however, grinned. "Man's got to try."

"You're either an idiot, or… no, there's probably no 'or'," Alex curled biomass into black claws over his left arm, as he considered the uncomfortable possibility that he might have just made a mistake, bringing Cross here. Dana was just a few rooms away. "Why shouldn't I kill you now?"

"Two things," Cross raised a finger, then another. "One, Ragland is still testing the serum. Two, I think you had questions."

"And you won't lie to me?"

"Should have thought about that before you carted me here," Cross pointed out, unfazed even as Alex snarled, growing frustrated.

"If you didn't have nanotech in you-"

"I'll have made a nice, light afternoon snack? Yeah." Cross smirked, his fingers flexing, then he sobered. "Look. I owe you. I know that. So ask what you want. If I can't answer, I'll tell you."

"All right." His instinct was to relax, even as logic told him not to trust the soldier. Cross was a dangerous hunter in his own right; even if Alex had (effectively) bested him once, it had taken more effort than he had wanted to expend. "Are there more teams like yours?"

"You mean, strike teams targeting runners? Wouldn't be surprised. You saw the supersoldier tech. The last I heard, they were trying to merge that with the nanotech. Might have worked by now, for all I know."

"Isn't the supersoldier tech better?"

"The nanotech isn't all about speed. It turns your body into a computer. Calculates probabilities. Automatic reflexes. Makes you live longer." Cross stared briefly out at the glass door. "Much longer."

"Didn't seem to keep you from being bitten and knocked off a building."

Cross shrugged. "Didn't say it was perfect. I have an older version of the nanotech, about one set from the very first one that didn't make its recipient bleed their brains out from their eyes and ears."

"Never thought about upgrading your OS up from Windows 3.1?"

"Hah. Very funny."

Alex smirked. "What do you think GENTEK and Blackwatch will do next?"

"If you lie low for a while and Manhattan recovers? The operation will go underground. They'll never stop trying to bring you back. But chances are, instead of facing strike packages and tanks, you'll just be facing more and more specialized Blackwatch teams."

"I can get out of Manhattan."

"Run away with your sister, you mean? Pretend to be human for the rest of your days? Yeah, I can see that happening," Cross drawled, glancing at the biomass tendrils crawling up and down his arms. "Like I said, in a way, I feel sorry for you. You were made the way you were, and no matter what you try to do or how you change, you're going to be hunted like a dog for the rest of your life."

"Funny thing to hear from another dog," Alex tapped a nail over the syringe with the stabilizer.

"I get kicked sometimes, but the rest of it is bones and exercise. Can't complain," Cross' answering smirk was ironic. "Not sure about you. Especially since you've dragged your 'sister' into this mess. You should have left her alone, Mercer."

Fury had him up on the hospital bed, black-clawed hands crunching the frame behind Cross' head. "When I went to look for her there were _soldiers_ in her _apartment_."

"And they'd have pushed her about and left her alone after that," Cross replied calmly. "Those were their orders."

"They would have _hurt_ her!"

"Momentarily. It wouldn't have ruined the rest of her life. Not like what _you've_ done."

"You fucking _bastard_, what the _hell_ do you know about me? I saw one of them grab her and I thought they were going to do to her what they did to me-"

"Alex?"

Alex looked sharply to the door. Dana blinked at them both, looking between Alex to Cross. She looked tired, and a little pale, but otherwise… _healthy_. Behind her, Ragland arched an eyebrow.

"Serum worked," Ragland said, unnecessarily.

"Ah." Alex was abruptly distinctly aware that he was more or less ensconced on Cross' _lap_. "Uh. That's good."

"I'll, ah, leave you two to it then," Dana said, with a faint flush. "You know, Alex, I always thought you were bi. And hi, uh, whoever you are-"

"Robert Cross," Cross said, urbanely. "Nice to meet you. I've heard a lot about you from your brother."

"Right. Um. Nice meeting you too, er, Robert. Talk to you later, maybe." Dana turned on her heel, walking quickly away.

"Dana, _wait!_"

"He'll need the stabilizer in about an hour," Ragland adjusted his glasses, and left just as quickly. Alex took a deep breath and glared at Cross, whose shoulders were shaking in silent laughter.

"Didn't she see me shouting at you?"

"Lover's quarrel?" Cross suggested, clearly finding the situation hilarious.

"Oh, fuck you," Alex growled, about to slip off the bed when Cross' uninjured hand curled up over the back of his neck and pulled his head down, drawing back his hood, until the soldier's breath brushed over his ear.

"Pretty boy like you, _I'd_ rather be the one doing the fucking," Cross purred.

Alex froze for a heartbeat, and then Cross began to laugh again, this time out loud. Flushing in fury, Alex shoved the specialist away so roughly that the bedsprings creaked in protest, then storming off to look for Dana. He'll kill Cross later. After he disabused his sister of her misconceptions.

II

He found Dana logging on to a laptop in her hospital room, a wrapped sandwich and a glass of water still untouched on the side table. She blushed when he walked into the room. "I know, I know, I should knock, but the doors are glass anyway, but yeah, maybe I should have been looking instead of talking to Doctor Ragland-"

"It's not what you think, Dana."

"I know. Don't worry, Alex."

"Good." Alex said, relieved.

"I mean, maybe he actually likes that claw thing you do with your hands." Dana wiggled her fingers. "I'm not judging, okay?"

Wait. "Dana-"

"He didn't looked shocked or scared at all so I guess you've probably done the claw thing before in front of him, anyway."

"Look-"

"It's the twenty-first century, Alex. Of course I don't care if you're bi."

"But-"

"And Robert is quite hot, in a silver fox kind of way. He's from the military, right?"

"Yes, so-"

"Hey, I'm not judging. Repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell was the best thing they did this quarter century." Dana was studiously staring at her laptop screen. "I never liked Karen anyway, even at the start. I think I do like Robert, though."

"He's an _enemy_," Alex snapped, irritated.

"Because he's military? Yeah, I know," Dana shrugged. "I said I wasn't judging you, right? I bet he looks _really _hot in the uniform. Was that how it started?"

"Dana-"

"All right." Dana raised both her hands. "No more making comments on the boyfriend."

"He's _not_ my boyfriend."

"It's like that, huh." Dana said sympathetically. "Alex, you've been through a lot, and you've done… bad things, _killed_ people. You're still my brother. I want you to be happy. If you have a chance at being normal again, however you go about it… well, I think you should take it. I like Robert. I hope he sticks around."

So much for killing Cross. "I doubt he will be." It didn't mean he couldn't kick him out. Into the Hudson.

"Just try, all right?" Dana smiled warmly at him. "If you're happy, I'm happy. I mean it. I know what you've done for me, Alex. In a way, I think we're closer now than we ever were."

His throat constricted briefly, and Alex looked away. "I think so too, Dana."

"Now that the awkward conversation is over, I'm going to get back into my research. Dig up some dirt on GENTEK. Find some way for them to leave us alone." Dana's fingers tapped on the keyboard. "Doctor Ragland said you saved the city."

"Sort of."

"Hah." Dana flashed him another smile. "I think you've changed, big brother. I rather like it."

He couldn't keep on lying, not like _this_. "I don't think I'm entirely human any more, Dana. I'm not the person you know."

"You weren't from the start of this mess." Dana said quietly. "You didn't use to give a damn about anyone but yourself. Funny how whatever turned you into what you are now somehow also made you into a better person."

"I hope so." Alex turned the fuzzy feeling of gratified contentment over, unsure and uncomfortable. "I hope so too."

III

"If Taggart's dead, who's in charge?"

"How should I know?" Alex had confiscated Cross' mobiles when Ragland had been cleaning out the wounds, but the Specialist didn't seem particularly bored from reading the weeks-old newspapers that still lay about the hospital.

"You can find out."

"Would it even be important?"

"Could be the difference between another nuclear bomb or a peacekeeping force," Cross said blandly. "Just saying. If you don't give me a phone, or a laptop, I can't help you."

"I don't need your help." Alex glared. "It's bad enough that my sister thinks we're… once you're healthy, I don't want to see you ever again."

"That's a sight better from all the death threats," Cross smirked.

"Don't push your luck."

"Sigmund Freud thought of the psyche as three tiered," Cross said mildly, counting it off on his fingers. "_Das Es, das Ich,_ and _das Über-Ich_. The 'It', the 'I', and the 'Over-I'. Children and newborns start off as _das Es_, all energy, instinctive drives and impulses, no sense of time, operating on a pleasure-pain principle."

"Is this where we start discussing a sexual interest in my mother or something?" His memories had little impression of Freud save a sense of contempt.

"Don't be juvenile."

"Any point to the shrink talk?"

"You've been alive, what, little over three weeks?"

Alex scowled. "So?"

"You'd have killed me without a thought during the first week, I think." Cross said calmly. "The 'Over-I' is – effectively – a conscience. The 'I' is the balance between the 'It' and the 'Over-I'. Reality principles. I think you might be getting there."

"Assuming I fit along your human scale."

"I haven't seen anything so far to suggest that you don't." Cross said blithely, and smirked as Alex blinked. "With that in mind, how would you like to work for the military?"

"If you ever lost your day job, you might want to consider being a comedian," Alex retorted. "You guys keep trying to kill me, remember?"

"We're not GENTEK, and I could put in a word for you."

"You're scraping the barrel of tricks, Cross."

"Just keep it in mind," Cross said idly, "Whenever you and your sister get tired of running, that mobile you have has a number recorded in the databank marked '0'."

"Sure, give myself up and get shut back in a lab, like Greene."

"What was done to Greene and to Idaho was GENTEK, not military. Blackwatch is interested in weapons, and GENTEK is our main supplier, but you wouldn't be the first thing we've poached from GENTEK on the side."

_PARIAH._ "Doesn't GENTEK object?"

"GENTEK and its esoteric experiments are allowed to happen on American soil with government funding because of the military's backing, Mercer. It's a symbiosis. Give it some thought. Like I said, you wouldn't be the first one."

"Thanks. I'll think about becoming a part-time lab rat, part time walking, talking nuclear bomb whenever I'm tired of the sunshine and the fresh air."

"Have it your way." Cross' smile was enigmatic, leaning forward to reach for the syringe.

-tbc… I'm not sure where to go with this fic. Maybe on the third runner from the comics… I'll think about it a little.-


	3. Chapter 3

[A/N: I haven't been to Manhattan, though I would like to. So you can imagine this story's geography probably gets fuzzy really, really fast. ^^ Wiki is a very underrated fanfiction tool.]

Monster's Playground

Chapter 3

I

Finding supplies that hadn't already been looted, contaminated or out and out destroyed took more time each day. There weren't any fresh produce any longer, and today he had simply raided a supermarket that had been too close to a hive for any human looters to chance and took as many cans of food away as he could carry.

The hospital itself was fairly well stocked, and the canteen had already become a makeshift soup kitchen, thanks to Ragland and his patients. Alex contributed now and then, but at the most part, so long as the patients kept away from Dana, he didn't really care what they did. Looters and the military had – so far – kept away from the hospital.

Careful to keep the biomass under control, Alex walked into the hospital. The woman at the reception was one of Ragland's first successes after Dana, his vaccine modified by whatever he had learned from the serum. All of the current hospital staff were volunteers, either from Ragland's patients or returning hospital staff, and he smiled tersely at them as he walked past. He had kept a low profile once the hospital had become steadily more crowded, and most of the staff knew him only as 'Dana's brother'. He found that it suited him. Human panic and fear was annoying to deal with, and it could be dangerous with Dana in close proximity.

Dana wasn't in her room, and a brief search of the wards didn't turn her up. Concerned, Alex checked Ragland's consultation room, then the courtyard gardens, and finally the canteen, where he was relieved to find her seated at the back.

His relief dissipated somewhat when he realized she was talking to _Cross_.

"Here," Alex dumped the plastic bags of canned food on the table, glaring pointedly at Cross, who had the gall to smirk at him. After Cross had intervened in an altercation between patients fighting to get vaccinated, he was being perceived as the hospital's default security force, and someone had even found him a discarded Kevlar jacket, which he wore open over a white shirt.

The shirt stretched tight over muscle and scars, and Alex hated it. For some reason, he couldn't stop staring at the faint ridges that scar tissue made under the cotton. Human reflex, perhaps.

"Baked _beans_," Dana said happily, rooting in the bag and seemingly oblivious to her 'brother's' temper. "Give it to the counter people."

Alex scowled. "They're for _you_, not the rest." He didn't just get chased about by a couple of hunters on the rooftops and dodge strike teams for a handful of freeloading rabble.

"We have to share," Dana insisted firmly, picking up the bags with some effort and pressing a light peck on Alex's cheek that made him flinch. "Thanks for your effort, big brother."

Startled, Alex didn't move to help her, though a patient did, once she was a respectable distance away from him. Staring at her hand over the food to the counter, Alex sighed, then glared at Cross when the specialist chuckled. "What?"

"Your sister is a good woman."

"You stay away from her." Alex frowned as Dana began to chat with the counter people – a chubby, elderly woman and her skinny pole of a son, both recent recipients of the vaccine. As he started forward, Cross caught him by the elbow.

"Sit down, Mercer. They're just people."

Mercer stared pointedly at Cross' hand until the specialist removed it, putting his palms up in a gesture of mock surrender. "If you go after her and make a scene, she'll only get upset with you."

"I'm trying to _protect_ her."

"You've consumed a lot of people, Mercer. A lot of memories. I'm sure you can cross reference something." Cross shrugged, sipping at a glass of water and turning back to his bowl of unidentifiable stew. "You want people to trust you, you have to give them a little space."

Despite himself and his instincts, Alex grudgingly sat down on the bench, if at an arm's length away from the specialist. "It's not safe here."

"No." Cross agreed. "But it's not a bad place. I never liked hospitals, though." Cross' missing fingers were ugly, scar tissue-ridden stumps just above the knuckle, but the specialist seemed unselfconscious. "Bad memories."

Alex stared a moment longer at the stumps, then at the Kevlar jacket. The way Cross had just said that- "What was it like, getting the nanotech?"

"I don't remember." At Alex's sidelong, disbelieving stare, Cross snorted. "Yeah, the first thing I remember is waking up in a GENTEK lab, thirty-eight years old, didn't know who I was, didn't know what I was. I only knew my name from the military dog tags that I was wearing." Another spoonful of stew, and a thoughtful, "I've been thirty-eight for forty years."

"Didn't have family?"

"Don't know. Seems I volunteered. The nanotech rewrites you from the inside out. It's an artificial reboot. Makes you faster, stronger."

"Makes you lose things."

"Could be. Maybe I didn't have anything to lose." Cross finished eating, slowly. "Didn't want to find out."

"Isn't that running away?"

"You're the expert on that, I guess," Cross said, almost playfully.

Alex ignored the jibe. "The rest of the Wiseman team was like you?"

"Similar. I was the oldest. They've come and go."

"Didn't have any attachment to them?"

"Personal attachment? No. Can't afford to." Cross jerked a thumb behind him, in the general direction of the entrance to the hospital. "Not with what we hunt. During the downtime, we go our own ways but do the same thing; drink hard liquor and find easy women." At Alex's frown, Cross added, "It's not as bad as it sounds."

"You're not putting a good light on your job offer." Sympathy was a foreign emotion; it kept him talking, and Alex wasn't sure he liked it.

"I didn't think you were even going to consider it," Cross shot back, with a faint smirk. "But if you are, I could wax lyrical on the health care, good pay, food and lodging-"

Alex snorted. "And when you get eaten by monsters, no one will miss you?"

"I'm sure we'll generate some paperwork somewhere," Cross deadpanned, wiping his mouth. "Should be out of your hair in a couple of days. After that-"

"After that, we're even." Alex leant back against the table, avoiding Cross' eyes. "And if I see you, I'll kill you."

"Sounds a little less convincing each time," Cross drawled, getting up from the bench.

The only reason why, Alex thought as he watched Cross walk away towards the communal sinks to wash his plate, he didn't immediately kick the specialist across the canteen for that remark, was because he didn't want to start a panic.

II

His uneasy truce with Cross ended rather abruptly late afternoon on the fourth day, with the crunching roar of APCs and jeeps pulling up with muddy scars into the hospital courtyard. Alex tensed as he watched from the second floor wards, by the window, and nearly generated claws on impulse when Cross padded silently up behind him.

"Party's over."

"Maybe." Alex scowled at the soldiers crawling out from their easily breakable toys.

Cross sighed, shoving his hands into his jacket, as though thinking things over, then he closed his eyes and rocked back on his heels. "A hell lot of civilians in here. A hell lot less, once they realize you're around."

"Shoot first, aim later?"

"Hah." Cross pushed past him, heading for the fire escape. "You and your sister, get out of here. I'll talk to them for as long as I have to."

"What, you're just going to let me go?" Alex said, incredulous – and not a little skeptical.

"Sure am. There are _kids_ in this place. If a firefight breaks out, I don't want that sort of blood on my hands."

"It'll just be a splash compared to the last three weeks," Alex noted bluntly, but Cross merely smiled his enigmatic, annoying smile and offered a half-wave over his shoulder, trotting down the stairs. Alex sprinted for Dana's room, only to find her trotting towards him, looking worried.

"I heard that there're soldiers."

"We've got to go." Alex grabbed at her elbow. "C'mon."

"What about Robert?"

"They're his friends."

Dana shot him a disbelieving stare, and dragged him back to the window. The leader of the soldiers, a stocky, tall man tanned the color of weathered brick, was arguing with Ragland. Hospital staff and worried civilians were huddled behind the middle-aged doctor, like chicks behind an angry hen.

As they watched, Cross jogged out of the fire escape on the ground floor, hands held high above his head, coming to a stop when the leader pushed Ragland roughly aside and stalked towards him. Alex wished he could hear what was being said-

"What are they saying?" Dana murmured.

"Who cares?" Alex shook himself mentally. He couldn't get distracted. _Dana_ was the only important one. "Let's _go_, Dana. He can take care of himself."

"No, look… they're _arresting_ him!" True enough, the leader gestured at the other soldiers, and a couple of them marched up to Cross, pulling his arms behind his back and cuffing them together, shoving him towards the jeep. Some of the staff shouted, stepping forward, but froze when the soldiers raised their weapons, herding them onto the courtyard. "You've got to stop them, Alex."

"They'll find us here. We'll worry about that once we're someplace safe." Watching Cross get frogmarched to the jeep caused an uncomfortable, restless curl of ice within him, and Alex set his jaw, resenting the unwanted, irrelevant emotion.

"No, you can't.. okay, okay, let me get my laptop!" Dana ran for her room, scooping up her laptop and stuffing it into the nearest bag, along with the charger and her mouse. Alex slung the bag over his shoulder and picked Dana up, despite her yelp of surprise. There was a balcony on the next floor from which he could – possibly – try to glide onto the next building. As he took the steps four at a time and burst out onto the balcony, Dana pressed her face into his hood, her arms trembling.

Three blocks away from the hospital, she curled her fingers into his arms. "Okay. Okay. Let's get to street level. Traveling like this makes me want to puke."

"Don't do it on me." Alex hesitated, looking around them. This wasn't one of the good areas. Fires and infected creep had long destroyed any landmarks his memories could remember, and even though the denizens of this part of town were humans, they were looters and thieves and worse. "Few more jumps first, okay?"

Dana shuddered, but she nodded slowly. "All right. Head towards Alphabet City. I read on the net that it's back up and running. _Normal_ running."

"We don't have money," Alex reminded her. They couldn't afford to rent any place in anywhere 'up and running'.

Dana chewed at her lower lip. "Okay. Okay. You decide, then. But get me a gun."

"Guns won't stop infected."

"That's what you're for, right?" Dana said snappishly, staring back over his shoulder, at the looming bulk of the hospital. "Shit. I'm so sorry, Alex. You had to get me out of there and… shit."

"Don't be," Alex said curtly, wondering why Dana was apologizing. Worried about Cross, maybe. "Cross can take care of himself."

"You _saw_ him get…" Dana cut herself off, her fingers tightening over his shoulders. "Okay." Another deep breath. "Yeah. I guess you never did go for the dependent types."

"Uh huh." Alex tried to parse Dana's slang, cross-referencing them slowly with his memories, then realized it was a little late to reverse the damage and glossed over it instead. "I think Hudson Heights is still being re-occupied. We can probably find some place there while we figure out how to leave Manhattan."

"The Heights? That's in the new gangland zones right now."

"It has space the last I saw, and it isn't in an infected or military zone," Alex pointed out. "But I'm open to suggestions."

"If we had some money I could probably get us out on one of the ferries. Only way to leave without having to go past the checkpoints." Dana hissed as Alex took another jump, squeezing her eyes shut until he landed. "Fuck, I _hate_ that. My stomach just crawls into my shoes to whimper and die."

"How the hell am I supposed to get money?"

"How should I know?" Dana said irritably, still stressed. "Rob a goddamn bank?"

There was a pause, then Dana groaned. "Did I just give you an idea? Alex, please tell me I didn't."

"Actually-"

"We are _not_ going to rob a bank!"

III

"You're a bad influence."

"Uh huh."

"I'm now a career criminal."

"Uh huh."

"I'll never be able to get a normal job ever again."

"Mm-hmm."

"There was probably CCTV in that thing."

"Yeah."

"You're not," Dana moaned, "Being helpful."

Alex rolled over onto his side on the couch. He didn't need to sleep, but sometimes – not now, admittedly – lying at rest was… calming. "You were happy enough to spend the money."

Dana muttered something indistinct and probably rude, even as furniture moved. Place a woman in a post-apocalyptic setting with martial law and zombie monsters, and she would still want to arrange furniture.

The couch faced a blank television with no reception and a street bustling with nervous humans. Alphabet City _was_ back up and running, even if the landlady who had agreed to house two tenants with no luggage and no referees insisted on rent up front and had looked even more frightened when Alex had dug a wad of bills out of his pockets. Few of the actual shops had reopened, most still boarded up or destroyed, but street stalls had been set up, and from the second floor up, Alex could smell hotdogs. The constant buzz of voices in his mind faded to a faint, soothing murmur.

Figured.

Dana leant over the couch, staring upside down at him. "Hungry?"

"I don't get hungry." Consuming humans had been more of necessity and healing than actual hunger.

Dana pulled a face at him. "_I'm_ hungry."

"So that was your subtle way of telling me to go out and buy you something."

"No, that was my subtle way of telling you that _we're_ going to go out, to one of those cafes, sit down, and have a normal meal together for the first time in five years, give or take a few months."

"Didn't I say I don't get hungry?"

"You can eat, right? Have a goddamn salad."

He wasn't sure he _could_ eat. "Fine."

"Better than you moping in here."

Alex found himself being dragged out from the bare rented room with peeling, faded cyan wallpaper into the bare narrow corridor outside with peeling, faded turquoise wallpaper, down creaking, breakneck steps and out into a street that stank of cigarettes, sweat, and recent poor plumbing.

The café that Dana chose was no better. Alex rested his feet on the thick duffel bags stuffed with cash under the rickety table and picked at the tasteless bowl of soggy chips. Salad was not on the menu – root vegetables were more readily available than perishable greens. Dana, however, ate her hotdog of stale bread and unidentifiable meat with every sign of relish.

"You're still moping."

Alex glared at her. The place stank, and the packed crowds and noise was making him edgy.

"I can take care of myself," Dana continued, a little indistinctly. "I've always done it. Up until recently you were never around unless you needed something. I'll get a gun. You don't have to watch me all the time."

_If you want people to trust you…_ "All right." Alex supposed that even… _after_, he _had_ left Dana alone now and then, while he had run errands for Cross and scrounged around for answers with GENTEK and Ragland.

Seeing Dana in the coma, and feeling helpless to do anything but rely on Ragland to come up with an impossible vaccine, however, had made him protective. He hadn't enjoyed that sense of impotency.

Still, when Dana smiled warmly at him, Alex couldn't quite take back his words. "Good. I'll keep digging. You can go check on Ragland or something." _Or Cross_. The words hung unspoken but distinct between them. "If you're hanging over my shoulder all the time, you'll drive me crazy."

"He offered me a job in the military. Cross, that is, not Ragland."

"It's kinda weird how you keep referring to him by his surname," Dana remarked, but grinned when Alex scowled. "Yeah, it's like that, huh?"

"Dana…"

"Okay, okay. Job in the military. Sounds great. Especially after they tried to nuke us all to hell."

"Yeah. I didn't bite."

"Or is there another branch, or something? There has to be some reason why he got arrested." Dana said thoughtfully. "Want me to look it up?"

Memories told Alex that even if he said no, Dana would do it anyway. "He's in something called Blackwatch. The Wiseman team. They hunt infected. Lance outbreaks."

"Maybe the military is looking for a scapegoat."

"You watch too many movies. There's a billion dollars' worth of nanotech in his bloodstream." Dredged memories from consumed GENTEK operatives informed Alex that he probably wasn't even exaggerating.

"He's a walking computer?" Dana whistled. "That's _cool_."

"It's a gross simplification-"

"Well, you know what people do to computers that stop working the way they should," Dana said quietly, tapping at her temple. "Reformat, reboot."

-tbc-


	4. Chapter 4

[A/N: Hm, prison break already! But frankly, I ran out of ideas for filler events. And I guess this is meant to be a slashy story. I usually also like to keep to one POV (or in a patterned POV) in an obsessive-compulsive manner (it's probably the day job and following precedents), but I did feel like writing some Cross. Hopefully it's not too hard to follow.]

Monster's Playground

Chapter 4

I

The nanotech told Cross via its delicately calibrated censors, even through the blindfold, that they had driven for about thirty-five minutes eight seconds over tarred road, then three minutes thirty seven seconds over grass, then one minute eight point six seconds over tarmac. The inbuilt locational system informed him that they were midtown, on 8th Avenue, and most likely in Hell's Kitchen. It began to calculate latitude and longitude as the jeep rumbled to a stop and he was shoved, stumbling, off the jeep and onto gravel.

The cloak and dagger told him that this wasn't a GENTEK or a marines operation, despite what the uniforms and setup had looked like from the hospital. Chill air prickled the skin on his neck as he was pushed forward, into a building, just as the nanotech shrilled warnings and advised him that even in his cuffs, if he jerked back at a _particular_ manner in a _particular_ angle, he could probably (91.3%) knock the soldier behind him unconscious-

Concentrating on keeping control of the tech instead of letting it take over his instincts, Cross grit his teeth and focused on his footing, memorizing the twists and turns to the exit, the echoes and the different textures in the air that marked corridors and larger rooms. The disciplined silence, marked only by military-issue boots, confirmed his suspicions about the nature of the sting. When hands pushed him down on a chair and cuffed his hands to its back, he rocked back, experimentally, but the chair was bolted to the ground.

The blindfold was pulled off, and behind him, soldiers left, the door hissing shut.

In front of him was a blank steel table, the room white and pale with fluorescent light. As Cross shifted uncomfortably on the chair, there was a flicker of static behind the table, then a faint buzz, and a holographic image sharpened into focus, of a faceless, thin man in a white, military suit, elegant fingers steepled before him, long legs crossed and straight-backed on a high leather chair.

Cross stared hard at the formless, censored blob that was the man's face and smiled coolly. "Director."

"Cross. Enjoyed your little vacation?"

"I do _so _enjoy being involuntarily checked into hospitals, yes."

"Indeed, by none other than Zeus, judging from surveillance footage."

Cross shrugged, wondering how to handle the Director's clipped tone. "He has whims."

"_It_, Cross. _It_," the Director corrected smoothly. "Still, it was the one highlight of a mission that was otherwise an unqualified disaster, Captain Cross. You've lost your team, botched the retrieval, and a creature wearing your form managed also to orchestrate the deaths of Randall and Taggart, both of whom were good friends of Blackwatch. Courting their replacements will take up precious time and resources."

"It's always nice to see how the finger pointing in Blackwatch still manages to string along matters absolutely outside my control."

"Watch your mouth, Cross. You may be the oldest member of the Wiseman team, but that also means you're the most outdated, software wise."

"Funny how I still have the best track record, Director."

"Up until recently, yes. The creature wearing your form gave us a good opportunity to get rid of you in a neat and organized manner. It was both unfortunate and fortunate that Zeus intervened." Fingers drummed briefly on the leather armrest. "GENTEK has made inroads into the supersoldier project. It's quite possible that as of this moment the Wiseman team's technology is obsolete."

"Possible, you say," Cross drawled. His fingers twitched behind the cuffs, feeling for the kink in the metal. It wasn't electronic – it figured. Blackwatch would have been careful. "Is this the final pep talk before the pearly gates?"

"We're going to conduct a little experiment, Specialist. I know you like being in Blackwatch. We're willing to give you a second chance, and overlook your failure in Manhattan."

"You want me to bring Zeus in?" Cross hoped that the blandness of his voice betrayed nothing of his sudden restlessness. He had liked Dana, and as to Zeus himself-

"You've shown that you're no match for Zeus, Cross," the Director said impatiently. "Think of it as a long-haul mission. We depend on GENTEK, heavily, and it's clear that Zeus is one of their best, if unexpected, successes. We think that it will work better for us than on a lab table under the Nevada desert."

"I offered him a job with Blackwatch. He declined."

"It doesn't need to work directly _for_ us. Zeus is a weapon. We just need to employ its handler."

"He doesn't-"

"It's shown a high inclination to listen to you so far, Specialist Cross. Here is my experiment. We're going to house you in one of the low-security military bases, and drop chatter about your location over a couple of the less encrypted military feeds. We'll give Zeus a week to come for you. If it does, consider yourself… forgiven. You'll be given a little time, and then we will contact you further."

"And if he doesn't?"

"Well then, Captain, perhaps we shall re-evaluate the terms of your continued employment." The Director crossed his legs languidly. "Terminally. Do try not to escape. You _are_ aware that the nanotech in your bloodstream will always tell us where you are."

II

The only reason, Alex told himself, that he was currently wearing the skin of a lieutenant and skulking around in a military base, was because he was bored. Dana had so-very-casually dropped a location to him, while hinting broadly that she needed him out of the apartment so that she could concentrate on trying to smuggle the both of them out of Manhattan via ferry.

Of course, he _could_ have ignored her completely and spent his time attacking unsuspecting infected in Central Park, or annoying Ragland, but Alex supposed that he really should find out who was in charge of the Manhattan clean up operations, now that the furor around the hospital area and the bases had died down somewhat.

That didn't explain why he wasn't already someplace else, given that the lieutenant he had consumed had known the name of the General that had replaced Randall. Therefore, Alex concluded that it had been because he was bored. Besides, one never knew which of these soldiers might have some sort of specialized weapon expertise that he might find useful. Or something. Boredom, first reason. Self-improvement, second.

Logic temporarily assuaged, Alex nodded curtly at a passing, saluting corporal. Lieutenant Jason Riley's memories were clear enough where the base's VIP prisoner was concerned; Cross had looked unperturbed when pushed into the interrogation room, and unperturbed when dragged out and shoved into a holding cell. Unfortunately, the Lieutenant hadn't been privy to the contents of the interrogation, but at least he had been privy to the holding cell's location and access codes.

The stocky officer who had done the arrest was one Major Jonas West, currently away in discussions in the SoHo military base, according to the Lieutenant's memories. Some sort of big shot with the military brass, it seemed. Alex had skimmed the memories for any indication of exactly _why_ Cross had been arrested, and had come up short. It seemed that the soldiers in the base were as nonplussed as he was: they hadn't even been the first wardens. It seemed that Cross had originally been brought elsewhere, and then had been housed in _this_ abysmally protected base about a couple of days ago.

Cross hadn't even been locked in a proper holding cell; those made of the fiberglass-steel alloys used by GENTEK to contain infected. Instead, Alex found him housed in what looked like a hastily cleared out detention room, with only one guard at the door which he managed to dismiss.

Cross stared at him quizzically when Alex entered the room, still wearing the Lieutenant's skin. The specialist was propped against the corner of the bunk. They had left him his khaki fatigues and boots, but the jacket was gone, and the annoying white shirt was discolored over the collar, stained with old blood. Cross looked bruised: in particular, a shiner against his cheek was likely to purple soon; but none the worse for wear.

"You're being moved," Alex said curtly. "Get up."

"Off the island?"

"That's for you to find out." Alex gestured at Cross with his rifle, and the specialist rolled to his feet, automatically holding out his hands. Alex stared at tanned wrists, confused, then frowned when Cross suddenly chuckled.

"Mercer?"

His cover blown, Alex settled for scowling. "Are we getting out of here, or what?"

"Did Dana talk you into this?"

"Yeah, she wants a pet. Let's go."

"I'm happy here." Cross shrugged, sitting back down on the bunk.

"Uh-huh, and that bruise on your face is from some sort of soldier-caveman love ritual."

"Rituals can be pretty intense," Cross quipped. "I said I was going to chance my luck with Blackwatch. They'll kick me around for a little, then it'll be bones and walks again."

Alex felt irritated. He had _just_ gone to all the trouble of breaking into a military base for a stubborn bastard who didn't want to get rescued. This was fine by him, but he had a _pretty_ good guess that Dana wouldn't be so understanding. "You have two choices. One, you walk out of here with me. Two, I drag you out."

"Three, you walk back out yourself," The specialist suggested dryly. "There's an outbreak on the mainland. I'll be needed soon. I suggest you and Dana get out of Manhattan while you can; they'd be sending acquisition teams back down here once the infrastructure is back up and running."

"Won't they reboot your brain?"

"Where did you hear that from?"

He was _never_ going to listen to Dana again. "All right, fine. You want to stay, I don't fucking care."

"GENTEK is coming for you," Cross said soberly. "You might want to start running."

"If they get in my way, I'll kill them." Alex said dismissively. "Figures. I break in to rescue you and all I get is a goddamn lecture."

"What, you want some sort of reward?" Cross patted his pockets pointedly, "Sorry, I'm a little short on cash."

Alex scowled. "You know what? I hope you _do_ get reformatted… hnn!"

He had forgotten how _fast_ Cross could be. Pushed up against the wall, warm palms pressed over his cheeks and a mouth crushed against his, Alex turned back to his usual form in utter shock. Cross breathed hard, through his nose, and the kiss deepened, softened, and he found himself shuddering and _purring_ as he leant up into the novel intimacy, fingers twisting into blackened claws over Cross' thin shirt, ripping deep rents over the cotton over his shoulders.

"There," Cross said, harshly, a little breathless, as Alex panted and bit down hard on a whine. "My hero. Happy?"

"Son of a _bitch_." Alex whispered angrily, curling his clawed fingers hard enough over Cross' shoulders to draw blood, but it had been obvious – too obvious – that he had _liked_ that. More than liked it. The specialist grinned, wolfish, his eyes narrowed and dark, as though relishing the pain.

"Did you really come here because of Dana?"

Alex's affirmative died in his throat, then he muttered, after an uncomfortable pause, "I don't know."

Deep down, despite everything, he knew that he had _wanted_ to help. Other than Dana, Cross had been the first person to treat him as a _human_-

"At least you're honest." Thumbs stroked gently under his wrists, unafraid of the writhing biomass, and Alex shivered, jerking his claws free, the sharp edges reddened with the specialist's blood. Gentleness, _tenderness_, from anyone other than Dana – it felt like too long, yet too soon, too _dangerous_ when his instinctive reaction was confusion, followed by wary suspicion.

"Why did you do that?"

Cross glanced up briefly from his inspection of the cuts on his shoulders, his smirk lopsided. "Look in a mirror and figure it out."

"I'm not even human!"

"Aren't you?" Cross asked simply, the question so direct that for a long moment Alex had no answer, then he raised one of his claws.

"Then how do you explain this?"

"Mercer, if I really wanted to, I can dodge bullets standing still. I've got a fairly broad concept of humanity. Can we have the philosophy discussion elsewhere?"

Alex stared at him. "I thought you were staying."

"Changed my mind." Cross said cheerfully. "Could you also find my gear?"

"Don't push your luck."

III

Alex had abandoned Cross to his own devices once they were out of sight of the military base, returning to the supermarket he had raided prior for the baked beans to scrounge up more supplies, and was therefore somewhat annoyed upon his return to the apartment to find Dana cross-legged on the couch, watching Cross fix the television.

"What is he doing here?" Alex demanded, as a line of static scratched briefly over the dark screen.

"Didn't you break him out of jail?" Dana sifted through the plastic bags as Alex dumped them on the sofa beside her.

"That didn't constitute an _invite _to _move in_." Alex transferred his glare to his sister. "How did he find us?"

"Walked into him in the market. Invited him home, naturally. You got toothpaste! I love you, big brother."

Alex sighed loudly, even as the television made a scratchy sound, an electronic whine, then a garbled jumble of unintelligible words, the image on the screen flickering into a wavy buzz over a stretched picture of a woman talking with her back facing what looked like the Manhattan skyline. Cross' long legs were stretched over the tiled floor, his head hidden by the television proper, and thankfully, he was wearing a loose black shirt. Clearly, white shirts made Alex amenable to bouts of idiocy.

There was a muttered curse, then a grunt, and the television's image abruptly slid into focus. "… preliminary reports indicate a wide scale terrorist attack in the form of a new biological weapon. Several terrorist organizations, including the Taliban, have claimed responsibility for the tragic devastation of Manhattan City, though there is as yet no official word on the affiliation or current location of the FBI's main suspect in the attack, the man known as Alex Mercer."

"We will have more on Alex Mercer within the hour. Please be warned: any citizens with information on Mercer are to contact the authorities immediately. Do _not _at any time attempt to engage or provoke him."

"Martial law has been declared in Manhattan City as our brave men and women in the troops battle the remaining terrorist cells on American soil. Aid organizations and the media have still been barred entry for fear of contamination. We move now to an interview with General Larry Sythe for an update on the crisis."

"Figures," Dana said sourly. "Blame the terrorists."

"Standard cover-up," Cross observed, looking preoccupied as he stared at the television.

Alex tuned out its droning. "Any luck on the ferry?"

"Yeah. I think we can get out in a couple of days."

"Of course, we could just have hijacked a helicopter-"

"Because nothing says 'subtle' like a stolen helicopter-"

"Or hijacked a boat-"

"If you can find a boat that hasn't already been used by evacuees during the last week, let me know."

"Fine." Alex said sullenly. "What about Cross?"

"What about me?" Cross asked, with mock innocence.

"He's coming with us, obviously."

"What do you mean _obviously_?" Alex growled.

"Well, we're on the run, and he's on the run, so-"

"_So_?"

"Look," Dana said, with a touch of impatience, "Why don't you boys work this out, and then let me know later when the dust settles, okay?"

Cross winced when the door to Dana's room slammed shut, leaving an air of injured silence. Alex muttered darkly to himself. Stolen memories or not, women could be _so_ unpredictable. "Get out."

Cross merely grinned at him, lopsided, muting the television and uncurling to his feet, padding close, until Alex reflexively curled his fingers, taking a step back as Cross walked right into his personal space, hating how his habitual form was so much shorter than the specialist's. "Cross."

"Didn't you want to continue the philosophy discussion?" Cross had his hands on Alex's hips, warm and heavy, and just as Alex was deliberating between turning his arm into a blade and chopping off the offending appendages, or warping into spiky armor, he was being bent back against the couch and kissed again, roughly, fingers dragging back his hood and raking over his short hair, the other hand clutching at his jacket, over his spine and molding him close.

Alex pushed at Cross' shoulders, outraged, biomass flickering up and down his arms in anxious, writhing panic-anger-_want_ and then he was growling and pushing back into the kiss, hands clenched over Cross' shirt high against his collar as a tongue curled teasingly over his lower lip. The memories weren't strangers to pleasure, but experiencing it firsthand rather than as a recollection was unforgiving in its intensity. Alex _moaned_ as Cross drew his tongue expertly into his mouth to suckle sensitive flesh, callused hands dragging his shirt out of his jeans and rubbing rough pads up his flanks to his ribs; a breath, and Alex was the one dragging Cross back up against him, the one worrying at the specialist's lip with blunt teeth until he _growled_.

"This isn't much of a… discussion," Alex said shallowly. The memories remembered enough to be breathless by habit, curiosity-arousal-disgust-shock all at once, then Cross smiled, slow and lazy and _predatory_ and the voices fell into a low buzz of dazed background noise as a muscular thigh pressed hard between his legs and the next kiss was brutally thorough, mapping every inch of his mouth until he whined and scrabbled at Cross' shoulders, fingers then claws then fingers again.

"Do _you_ think that you're human?" Cross murmured, as Alex stared at him, blank and almost bewildered, his chest heaving, pleasure a suffusing, unfamiliar warmth in his cheeks and in his fingertips.

"No," Alex said, then, harshly, "Yes."

Cross' lip curled at the leftmost edge, sly and inviting, thumbs stroking up his jaw and to the wet curve of his parting mouth. "That's good enough," he said, as Alex grudgingly gave ground to instinct over common sense, crooking his forefinger under the specialist's jaw and tugging him down.

-tbc? Readers familiar with my writing probably know that my specialty is fluff-with-attempted-filler-plot. It's become a habit. Yes, I will try to push it past PG13, no, I don't know where the plot is going, yes, suggestions and concrit are always welcome.-


	5. Chapter 5

[A/N: Just like Nine Days to Autumn and the original Vitruvian Man, I think this is turning into a background!fic in terms of content and structure rather than a fic proper. This means that the fic will probably continue in its hectic way, and then I'll either write a proper fic afterwards or do a set of long one-shots.

I think my Alex Mercer is obviously influenced by that artist who draws a lot of prototype Cross x Alex doujin on pixiv.]

Monster's Playground

Chapter 5

I

Alex flinched back instinctively at the sudden crash from Dana's room, ignoring Cross' wince as a wayward curling claw sliced a thin red line over his right arm. "Dana?"

When there was no immediate answer, Alex found himself pressed up against the door, jerking impatiently at the knob. "Dana? _Dana!_" Losing patience, he shoved hard, the door shearing off its hinges. Dana's laptop was half-open on the floor, power cable jerked out of the wall, a screensaver crawling colorful pipes over its face. Dana lay on the ratty mat before the bed, coughing and clutching at her throat.

"Dana!" Alex took a step forward, and snarled as Cross grabbed him by the arm, shrugging the soldier off so roughly that Cross stumbled heavily back against the peeling wall with a low oath.

"She's infected."

"She took the cure. _Your_ cure." Alex narrowed his eyes, claws curling tighter. "What was in that 'cure'?"

"Hey, hey." Cross held his hands palms up. "It was a cure for a _normal_ infection. Greene's. If she's infected again, then it's something else."

"_What_ else?" Behind him, Dana moaned, rolling restlessly onto her back, pale and still unconscious.

"You really need me to spell it out?"

"Fucking _tell_ me."

"Did you recently," Cross said slowly, "Share food with your sister?"

"I don't need to eat-" Alex caught himself, frowning. There had been those goddamned soggy excuse for chips. And a sip of watered-down coke, under Dana's insistence. "I'm not _contagious_."

"You want to stand here arguing with me, or do you want to help me get her to Ragland?"

"I don't need your help." Alex moved to pick up Dana again, and hissed when Cross was abruptly standing in his way, palms still up in the air. "Get the hell out of my way."

"Do you want to make it worse?"

"_Assuming_ it…" Alex switched briefly between visions, and grimaced. Cross was still a pale white – Dana, on the other hand, had at the _least_ a fever. "God _damnit_." It had to be the coke. Alex slammed his fist against the wall, cracking it and making a chunk of plaster fall from the ceiling. "Damn _it_."

"Some of the cars still work, and the roads have cleared out. I'm going to drive her to Ragland," Cross said calmly. "You follow, clear a path."

Alex bared his teeth, shifting his weight. He didn't want to entrust his sister to Cross – to anyone, awkward and uncomfortable incidents in the living room and the military base aside. He couldn't trust a _Blackwatch_ soldier, let alone a specialist whose self-proclaimed vocation was hunting his kind. However, he had no idea how much time Dana had left, or whether continued close exposure to him would worsen her as Cross was suggesting. If it had been from the drink, the virus must have been incubating for a while.

Particularly since it had manifested so suddenly.

Left with a choice between instinct and logic, Alex gave ground, if grudgingly. "All right. But if you fuck this up, I'll rip your head off."

"Always the charmer," Cross said dryly, clearly unfazed by the threat, carefully picking Dana up in his arms. "Lead on. Find a car. And hopefully, one of your memories will know how to hotwire it."

II

Watching Mercer clear a path was like witnessing a natural disaster in motion. Cross had his foot on the pedal and Mercer was still faster, shoving debris out of the way and slicing up any soldiers, hapless citizenry or infected in his way, only motioning occasionally for the car to stop and wait.

With Mercer's attention fully occupied, Cross knew that this was likely the last chance he would get, up until he had what he wanted. Dana had been dosed with a tiny amount of stabilizer, enough for her immune system to go into overdrive but not enough to cause any long-standing harm.

Decades in Blackwatch had made Cross all too aware of how much stabilizer a normal person could take before flat lining, thanks to how the doctors tended to 'experiment' on some of the newcomers before putting them under for the nanotech. Dana would wake up in about a day with only a bad headache, and hopefully, Cross and Mercer would be long gone. Cross didn't doubt that Ragland would know how to hide her – after all, the scientist had managed to evade GENTEK for _this_ long.

Once away from Dana, Cross was fairly sure that he could keep Mercer from becoming _too_ suspicious. It had been a close call in the apartment – the comment about sharing food had been a wild, successful stab in the dark.

He dialed a number by heart on his phone and clamped it between his ear and his shoulder, as Mercer gestured for the car to pull over, tall and menacing in his armored form as two hunters bounded up towards him, snarling and hissing. The phone rang out once, but at the second attempt, as Cross watched Mercer sink all claws into a hapless hunter and consume it, the Director picked up.

"Cross."

"I can bring Zeus in."

"That is not what I asked."

"How long do you think he'll trust me?" Cross countered, with a sidelong glance at the unconscious form of Dana. "It's hit and miss even now. Someday he might cut off my head by accident, then he'll be loose again."

"Try your best to stay on his good side then, soldier."

"He's not human. You're asking a hell of a lot. Or I can bring him in, no fuss, no problems. I trust you have a better way of suppressing him. Then you'll have all the time in the world to figure out what makes him tick."

"No fuss, no problems," The Director repeated slowly, skeptically. "The facility-"

"You have PARIAH in the facility. Surely you're still well-equipped."

"Mercer is a loose cannon. Unpredictable. He has power beyond, perhaps, even PARIAH's vast capabilities. I think I prefer-"

"You're also placing a lot of trust in _me_, Director. Could be I'm a little tired."

"We know where you are, Cross."

The remains of the second hunter smashed into the asphalt six feet away, Alex springing high overhead, bladed arm outstretched. Cross smiled faintly, thinly. "If your trust in my abilities as a 'handler' is to be believed, I could take on Blackwatch and the world and still have good betting odds."

The Director inhaled harshly, then sighed. "What _do_ you want, Cross?"

"Sharp as ever, boss." Cross watched as Alex sliced off the hunter's head with a snarl of animalistic triumph, digging his clawed hand into the hot gore as the beheaded hunter twitched and flopped in its death throes. "I want the nanotech removed. And after that, I want out."

"You could die."

"I'll take that chance. Get transport dispatched to the Hudson relay point. I'll get Mercer to Area 51. Once he's contained, hold up on your end of the bargain."

"Or we could kill you once you stop being useful."

"As you've said, I might die during the procedure. And if I live, I just become another ordinary meatbag. So you're not losing out either way, are you?"

"You're going to give up being superhuman, because of what, a near death experience in Manhattan?" The Director's cultured tone dripped sarcasm, even as Mercer began to sprint forward again, gesturing at the car to follow.

"Let's say I did a little thinking, and forty years is a pretty long time spent as a clockwork soldier." Cross retorted.

Walking back across Manhattan from the hospital had been a chilling sight – not only from the dehumanization of the still lawless parts of Manhattan, but also the absolute disinterest or worse shown by the military and GENTEK. It had been a revelation to understand that most of the people he had passed by on his way to Alphabet City would have left him to die of nanotech poisoning in the park, or worse, killed him to take his gear.

Most of the people he had passed by would have run away instead of attempting to render a nuke harmless knowing that they might die in the process, whatever the reasons. So many dead and dying from a virus that had been developed as a weapon, released by a doctor that knew what it could do.

He had told Mercer that he enjoyed being in Blackwatch, and as much as that had been to give a little context to his job offer, there _was_ a little truth in it still. Blackwatch was mostly a slick operation, with good benefits, great pay. However, he had spent forty years doing what he was told, knowing that at any moment someone he would never see could decide if he should die a slow, painful death by poisoning.

Cross had never had time or much of an inclination to take a step back and think about the sickness itself rather than lancing the symptoms. He was growing tired of what he did… and he had long, long been tired of the nanotech. Maybe it was time that he took a step further.

Then Director said, in a clipped tone, "Get to the relay point. The transport will take you onwards to Area 51. After which, you'd better pray that what you want won't make you end up as one of the little white stones in our back yard."

"Ten-four." Cross said dryly, switching the phone off and shoving it back into his vest, accelerating again as Mercer bounded forward.

Still ruled by his instincts, Zeus had been easy to control with carrots and sticks. Cross knew he was playing a dangerous game, with a predator as powerful as Mercer, but he had dealt with outbreaks for longer than any of the teams in Blackwatch, and was still alive; he had gone up against a runner and destroyed it, matched himself against Zeus and survived.

Perhaps it was betrayal, but watching Mercer cavalierly plow through civilians in various stages of infection as if they weren't there in his haste, sending them flying to impact against walls and the road with sickening cracks, Cross decided that it had to be the right thing to do. Mercer's humanity came from his concern for his 'sister'. At present, he seemed ambivalent about humanity as a whole – Cross was no longer even certain if his efforts in saving the island had been more to do with saving Dana or saving the citizens as a whole.

It was too fragile to trust to fate.

III

"Well?"

Cross stared pointedly at the twisted metal that had once been part of the railing for the hospital stairs, but Alex ignored it. The biomass was restless again, writhing up and down his arms, and he didn't give a damn if it was freaking out any staff around to see him. Finally, the soldier sighed. "She's infected. Ragland's stabilized her for now, but you're back to square one. Sorry."

"Fuck." Alex slammed his fist back, and the abused rail sheared off its foundations with a shriek of metal. "_Fuck_."

"I have a solution, and you won't like it." Cross continued, sitting down heavily on the stairs, looking tired as he rubbed his palm over his eyes.

"Let's hear it."

"The place where they give us soldiers the cure? They might be able to tailor one for you."

"The catch being that I accept your so-called job offer. It's all a little too _neat_," Alex growled, instantly wary. "Why shouldn't I just go in there and talk to Ragland?"

"Firstly, you don't know if you're now contagious. Secondly, if you infect the people in there? Dana might wake up – if at all – to a room full of zombies. Ragland has her quarantined right now. Thirdly, Ragland isn't half as bright as some of the pet scientists they have over in Area 51." Cross counted the options off over his fingers. "In any case, I've asked Ragland to work on a cure. He still has a sample of your blood as well as the serum. Would it hurt getting a little more help?"

Alex rocked back on his heels, frowning and biting on his lower lip. He could see the logic: and it wasn't as though Cross hadn't sounded sincere now and before about the 'job offer'. Maybe Blackwatch _was_ interested in employing monsters. Hell, on bad days, he couldn't quite tell the difference between supersoldiers and hunters, save in terms of fashion sense.

Besides, once he got the cure from Area 51, he could always quit. It wasn't like running away from or murdering the military was difficult. And as to Ragland, he had trusted Ragland to hide Dana before. The doctor might be annoying even on his best of days, but he knew what he was doing.

"You can arrange that?"

"I've spoken to my superiors. Just in case," Cross raised his hands again when Alex bared his teeth. "They've said that if you want to take up the offer, we head over to the Hudson Blackwatch relay point."

"That's _it_?"

"It's just a matter of us getting back to Area 51 to wait. You can even talk to PARIAH, if you're curious."

"They'll definitely work on a cure?" Alex said skeptically.

"Sure." Cross shrugged. "If not, once we're in Area 51, I'm sure it's not beyond you to raise some hell until they do what you want."

True. "And let me guess, _you're_ going along for the ride."

"Blackwatch doesn't trust you, and you can agree that they have good reason to. Right now they think you listen to me," Cross said dryly, chuckling when Alex arched an eyebrow in disbelief. "Yeah. Isn't that all kinds of fucked up."

Alex stared thoughtfully at Cross. "I don't give a damn what they think. But you had better be clear that I don't take orders from anyone." At Cross' faint smirk, Alex amended irritably, "Unless it suits me."

"I could work with that," Cross murmured, as though to himself, pulling himself up using the remaining rail and stretching like an animal, all fluid muscle, then loping away towards the gate and the waiting stolen car.

Alex felt his breathing turn a little shallower, his clawed fingers uncurling. Away from Dana, alone with Cross, again there was that curl of uneven tension, eight parts aggression, one part curiosity and one part something hot and restless that he couldn't pinpoint even with the aid of all the minds within him. His spine curved as Alex shifted his weight back onto the balls of his feet, crouching slightly, fighting the urge to pounce. He could have all his claws buried into that lean back in a second, drag back talons with a flick and sever the spine, sear away his agitation with violence, or something else-

Cross' businesslike tone broke the spell. "Let's get to the relay point."

"After you, old man." Alex swallowed. He'd never been that close to losing control before. Maybe it was the nanotech.

IV

The Blackwatch personnel at the relay point and in the helicopter were professionals, staying silent or quietly following Cross' cue when Mercer asked about the 'cure', betraying no hint of surprise. Cross allowed himself to relax only when Manhattan dropped away behind them, the roar of the chopper blades a constant, soothing drone of sound. Mercer seemed tense, staring back through the small windows at the city until it became a gray outline, then he slouched back on the narrow seat, crossing long legs and folding fingers in his lap. Only the writhing spikes of biomass that rippled up his arms and shoulders were any indication of his restlessness.

Mercer tensed when Cross carefully picked up a wrist, clenching his teeth as, fascinated, the specialist poked at the biomass. Black and red strands curled carefully over his fingers, but one turned bladed and drew a thin, stinging cut in warning over his palm. Cross ignored the pain and the way a drop of his blood seemed to just melt into the biomass, pulling off his glove. Mercer's eyes widened, but he made no sound, nor did he pull his hand away.

The biomass was warm, slick and almost metallic in texture, organic in its constant chaos. The two other Blackwatch soldiers in the chopper shifted uncomfortably as a thick tendril wrapped almost playfully around Cross' wrist, retreating into the cockpit. Other tendrils curled over each finger, forcing his palm to splay open as Mercer inspected the healing cut.

"Human skin. It's so fragile."

"It's one giant sensor," Cross shrugged, forcing himself and the nanotech to keep calm as Mercer forced his hand palm down, then palm up again.

"I copied Alex Mercer cell by cell. I'm aware." Mercer said, looking irritable. "What did you do that for?"

"Do what?"

Mercer pointed wordlessly at his palm with his free hand.

"Ah." To be honest- "I was curious."

"You're not worried about being infected?"

"You can't do what I do and-"

"I haven't decided whether you're stupid, or brave, or both." Mercer interrupted, with a sidelong glance at the cockpit, dropping his tone to a liquid growl. "I can't decide whether I want to kill you, or…"

"Or?"

Mercer glared. "You spoke about human development. Basic impulses. If you can't fight or flee, is your next impulse usually to fuck?"

"Not… exactly." Cross stifled the urge to laugh. Instincts told him that it would be the last thing he should do if he didn't want to get kicked out of the helicopter. His throat felt suddenly dry. "Is that what you want?"

"Most of the minds think so." Mercer dropped a heavy, freshly clawed hand over his abdomen, and smirked as the specialist didn't even flinch. "Maybe after we get the cure for Dana, I'll think about it myself."

_We_, Cross noted, as tendrils curled around his right thigh and teeth rasped over his neck, just under his jaw. Mercer was giving in to his immediate instincts rather than logic or reason, wrenched from his sister's side with no one else to trust and no context for the situation. It was working out well… even if guilt was an ugly pit growing within him.

Mercer wasn't entirely human, if at all, Cross told himself, as biomass explored pockets and the buckle of his belt, the creases over his jacket, Mercer nearly in his lap as he sniffed at the juncture of his neck and his shoulder, teeth scraping over the collarbone, making the specialist sit up and shiver.

The only problem was that Mercer _acted_ more human than most of the humans Cross had the pleasure of meeting over the last few weeks. That was what made him turn and push at slouching shoulders, startling Mercer out of the spell. It felt like he was pushing at a brick wall, as Mercer stared at him silently for a heartbeat, unmoving, then thankfully, he settled back on his seat. "Cross-"

"Get some rest," Cross suggested gently, looking out of the window at the cities that sleeted past. "I'll wake you up when we're there."

-tbc-


	6. Chapter 6

[A/N: I think probably one more chapter to this fic, then I might start with the long oneshots.]

Monster's Playground

Chapter 6

I

-Three_two _one… and wake-

Alex rolled to his feet so quickly that he rammed his shoulder against a wall. He was in a white cube of a room, all seemingly seamless ceramic, about ten feet up and across.

"What the _fuck_."

-_Ha_ha_ha_ha-

The voice was a warm whisper, an _impression_ rather than actual words, twisting at the back of his mind in a comfortable weight. One of the minds, perhaps, or- "Which one are you?"

-We'll leave that for now. Welcome to Nevada.-

"Area 51." Experimentally, Alex changed his right arm into the dense fist, slamming it against the wall with all his might. It didn't even crack. "Shit."

-I did give you a little _push_- the voice whispered, amused, -but you're just too easy, you and the other one-

The voice wasn't making sense. "Shut up." Alex felt carefully and slowly along the wall, closing his eyes, trying to find a seam for a door. "I don't need my lunch talking to me right now."

-_Ha_ha_ha_ha- mocking, now. –I couldn't speak to you before until you got this close, Zeus-

"My name is Alex Mercer." It had to be one of the soldiers he had eaten, then.

-Alex was just your first… lunch. Your name is Zeus. It fits you better- the voice retorted, untroubled. –Brother-

_Brother_? Alex paused, looking around again, suspiciously. "I don't have a brother."

-Our mother was Greene, dear, sweet, insane Elizabeth Greene. She cried when they took me, you know- the voice said, sweetly regretful. –And then she tried to eat the culprit. I guess that was love-

_PARIAH_. "How are you even talking to me?"

-_They_ don't know the least about me, brother, or you, or the other one-

"The other one?" Alex kicked himself for being so _stupid_, pushing away from the wall. He should have listened to reason. Trusting a Blackwatch soldier was just asking to be shot in the back.

-That one-

"_Which_ one?"

-I think you called him Cross-

Alex growled. "If I ever see him again I'm going to kill him. Slowly."

-No_no_no, I wanted you both here. It took time. Some time. Much time. But I called and the both of you came-

"What are you talking about?" Alex began to feel along the wall again, frowning.

-Mother's gift. You'll listen to me-

"The hell I will."

-Raise your arm and pull it behind your back-

To Alex's shock, his arm moved automatically. The voice shook in a whispering laugh before it let him go. "How…"

-It's stronger when you are here… otherwise, it's just a little touch. Influence. Numbers and information and a little help, with the other one, forty years of a little help and a little push. A tug and you both came here- Another whispery laugh. –I'll let you out soon. You're in level six, containment. Cross is on level four, medical. Break him out of the lab, then come to me. Cross will have the codes, so keep him alive. Don't make me hurt you, brother-

"I won't listen to-" Alex's words cut off as his right arm turned into a blade that pushed the edge up against his throat. "Shit."

-Soon, soon- A deep, trembling sigh. –So soon-

"You spoke about Cross being the other one," Alex said slowly, trying to understand. "You can affect nanotech?"

-Forty years ago widespread Internet was a pipe dream, Zeus- the voice said mockingly –Did implantable nanotech exist save in science fiction forty years ago-

"But-"

-He wasn't lying to you. He just didn't-doesn't know what it was. What he _is_-

"So if it wasn't nanotech, then why is Cross the way he is?"

-He got a dose to kick start evolution, Zeus. The blood of someone…_something_ that transcends humanity itself-

"They…" Alex began, disbelieving, as revelation dawned.

-Mine-

II

Being strapped in a cyan medical robe to a steel surgical table was just like old times, Cross thought wryly, as scientists fussed over the cuffs and the drip. A gloved hand was guiding an oxygen mask towards his face, stopping midway as a hologram flickered beside the table. The Director's image was clearer than in the military base, arms folded behind his back.

"You'll regret this, Cross."

"There's nothing to regret."

"You don't know what you're asking us to do," the Director said, pitying, "But you _are_ rather obsolete. The latest versions, shall we say, do exactly as they are told. You're an anomaly. A curiosity, as long as it was bearable."

"Thanks." Cross said dryly. "I want that written on my little white stone if I don't make it. 'Here lies Robert Cross, an anomaly'. How's PARIAH, by the way? Gotten him to do much more than stare at the wall recently?"

The Director sneered. "Just because you're good with monsters doesn't mean you're useful, Robert Cross. It's been about three years since you saw our pet monster. You'll be pleased to know that PARIAH now does as it's told, and its gift is quite valuable. Yours, on the other hand…"

"I got Zeus for you, Director. Follow through on your end of the deal." The helicopter had been gassed upon landing in Area 51, with something colorless and almost odourless – save from the nanotech – that had made him dizzy, but had knocked Mercer out like a light. His last job had been far easier than he had even hoped for.

"So I shall, Cross. So I shall." The Director gestured, and the doctor fit the mask over his face. The nanotech informed him with some alarm that the gas he was breathing in was laced thickly with anesthetic, but he ignored it, allowing his limbs to go limp, the beating of his heart growing louder and louder. "It's almost a pity to waste you, soldier. But I suppose the study of the blood of our first successful experiment with PARIAH could prove more useful to Blackwatch than you ever were in life."

Wait… Cross frowned, trying to form words, but his throat failed him.

"Did you think it was nanotech all this while?" The Director murmured, as doctors stepped through his flickering hologram to attach tubes to Cross' veins, beginning to draw out his blood. "You and the rest of the Wiseman team, and all of your descendents… so gullible. Forty years ago, nanotech was still a blueprint in the geek labs in MIT, Cross."

"But we had PARIAH. Its blood is fascinating. Alive and operational even without a host. Interactive. A repository for information that the human brain cannot even begin to process adequately, a symbiotic parasite. A virus, you could say, but for us it was a little more like the download of a superior operating system into the human framework. You're the first and the last subject whose body accepted a pure dose of PARIAH blood, Cross. For a long time, before we actually _did_ develop nanotech, the rest of your Wiseman teammates were just watered down copies."

He was losing blood quickly. The nanotech – or PARIAH's blood, or whatever it was – shrilled alarm, and tried to force him to move his limbs, but the anesthetic was good.

"Of course even _you_ had the occasional incompatibility hiccups. We're thankful to Doctor Ragland for discovering the perfect cocktail to re-synch the blood chemicals. Not only did it solve our problem, it gave us the perfect leash. We control PARIAH and we control the stabilizer…"

Cross wished that the Director would stop talking. It would be just his luck, dying to the background music of psychobabble, marinated in personal stupidity. Why had he even _thought_ that he could ask for an out without Blackwatch deciding to kill him? He wasn't just some know-nothing private that they could afford to turn out to pasture. And daring to string something as dangerous as _Zeus_ along like that just so that he could walk into his own personal demise should have been far more than his usual caution would have afforded-

The alarms going off in the base registered only as a fuzzy background whine, and Cross was somewhat relieved when the Director frowned, turning around, and then the holographic image disappeared. He stared up dreamily into the surgical white of the overhead lamps, dimly aware of panic and chaos erupting around him, doctors scurrying about, the faint background screams.

It wasn't a bad way to go, getting put down like an old dog, pride and stupidity aside. Painless. And he was tired. Truly tired…

A shadow blocked out his view of the white for a moment, and Cross blinked owlishly, trying to place the blurring features, or the sounds of a seemingly one-sided argument over a growing whir of machines. Claws jerked the mask off his face, none too gently, and sliced through cuffs before turning into fingers that carefully removed tubes, swabbed wounds and pressed bandages onto his skin, images and sound slip-sliding into focus as the symbiotic blood fought off the anesthetic.

"… no, it's not like I can just pour all that blood back down his throat!"

-Ha_ha_ha_ha_ it was a thought-

Cross' brow furrowed. There had been another voice, but he couldn't place where this one was coming from. He tried to speak, but only managed a hoarse, weak groan.

"Well fuck you too, he doesn't look like he's going to die anytime soon, weak as a kitten is a good state for a Blackwatch soldier to be, and so long as he's conscious enough to input codes that's good enough for you, isn't it?"

-Fine, fine, fine- the voice seemed amused. –Whatever works-

"I get you out of here and we're quits, 'brother'," Mercer growled, hauling Cross' arm over his shoulder and bodily dragging him out of the lab, his boots drawing thick trails through the bloody remains of the scientists. "Stay awake, old man."

"Get who?" Cross wanted to ask, but the words came out as a mutter. Mercer, however seemed to understand.

"We're breaking out PARIAH. And then I'm going to kill you."

III

Alex dumped Cross in a corner as gunfire chipped the edge of the wall and bullets ricocheted off the ceiling. Warping one arm into a shield and another into the whip, he braced himself as bullets pinged off the hardened biomass as he rounded the corner. The whip took out the huddled soldiers, the bladed end slicing necks and dicing arms, then he reached down to haul Cross back up. The specialist was sliding in and out of unconsciousness, a dead weight, and eventually, Alex gave up, slinging the body over his shoulder.

Annoyed, Alex wished that the _one_ truth about the Wiseman team hadn't been the killswitch. It seemed that PARIAH's blood didn't really agree with the run of the mill infected, and Alex didn't want to risk it by consuming Cross for the sake of convenience.

-Nearly there. Lift shaft. Break the doors-

"Your voice is getting fainter." Alex turned his right arm into the dense fist and smashed at the metal until it sheared open in a wide dent. Peering up warily, then down, he jumped for the cables, the biomass anchoring him around it. "Now what?"

-Drop two floors and break back in. Reception is going to be hot-

"Now you tell me." Alex gingerly slid down the cables and leaped for the wall, claws out. Concrete crunched under talons, and Cross groaned as they slammed against the cracking surface. Alex readied the dense fist, and metal shuddered at the first blow.

-Careful. Don't kill him-

"I know, I _know_." Alex snarled, digging claws into the thick metal. With a grunt, he forced the lift doors forward, ignoring the pinging bullets that screamed past or ricocheted from the metal.

-_Grenade-_

"Shit!" Alex dropped the makeshift shield, warped his whole body into the armor and barreled forward, slamming into the host of surprised soldiers and then diving around the corner. The grenade went off with a _boom_, and Alex winced as the tortured lift door was thrown back by the blast, its edge a deadly scythe as it smashed into security.

He was facing an empty, concrete corridor, the rooms to each side barricaded with steel shutters. "Any more surprises?"

-The scientists have locked themselves in. No more guards on this level. I'm keeping them busy on the others-

"How?" At the end of the corridor was another steel door.

-They keep some infected here, for experiments. And of course, there are all those other Wiseman soldiers- A dark, whispery laugh. –They only have a little bit, a little thimble of blood but it's enough-

"You could have broken out yourself if you wanted to," Alex muttered, as he slammed the first fist against the steel door. "Surely Cross isn't the only one who knows the codes."

-Ha_ha_ha_ha_ha- PARIAH whispered, softer now, as the door gave under the repeated blows, and then abruptly fell silent.

They were in a circular concrete room with no exits. Computers and glowing holoscreens lined the walls, wires snaking from terminals and silver cylinders to a central glass cylinder, anchored to the ceiling and to the ground by silver and platinum clasps. Cables and tubing ran from the base of the glass cylinder into points on the wall, stained and dark, and the room was filled with a constant, low mechanical hum.

The cylinder was about three-quarters full of viscous red liquid. _Blood_.

"Where's the next door?" Alex asked, confused. This looked like a dead end.

-Three years ago they said I was going bad-

"What the _fuck_." Alex snarled as his arms gently lowered Cross to the ground and turned into dense fists, approaching the cylinder. He fought, hissing, trying to twist shape, form, frame, _anything_.

-Two years ago they said I must die-

Cross muttered something behind him, and it was with a faint sense of growing unease that Alex realized that the words were the same.

-One year ago they drained me dry-

"PARIAH!"

-locked me away-

"Hey, fuck!"

-still using my blood-

Alex tried to dig his heels into the ground, snarling, but it was useless. Another step.

-not knowing-

"What do you _want_?"

-that all I needed was a host-

"_No_…!" Fear spiked as his right fist shattered the glass. Blood splashed him and his clothes, pooling over the biomass and over giant fingers. Alex moaned, shuddering, frozen on the spot, then he flinched as the blood began to boil, bubbling and searing in temperature. It flowed off his clothes and the biomass and onto the ground, pooling into a perfect circle, then streaked behind him.

Towards _Cross_.

It had never been about the codes after all, Alex realized belatedly, helpless. There _had_ been no codes. PARIAH had simply bided its time until it could orchestrate first a suitable host, then suitable muscle, and finally, with a puppet master's delicacy, all the factors required for it to be reborn. A host weak and nearly drained dry of blood, brought to its prison.

-I'll deal with you later-

His hands changed into claws and back again in his anxiety. PARIAH was seeping into the bandages, which curled off the specialist's skin, devoting only a minimum effort to keeping Alex frozen. If he could only break his concentration-

-a drop of blood in the helicopter…

Alex focused all his concentration in his cell bank, all but falling to his knees in sheer effort. He had never copied anyone without a wealth of genetic material available before. The Supreme Hunter had been able to copy Cross just from his fingers, but a drop of blood – _focus_, remember, _rebuild_, cell by cell-

The hold upon him withdrew sharply as Alex rolled new shoulders, flexing his fingers. Cell by cell, he would seem exactly alike to the host, which PARIAH was trying not to hurt – and just as Alex had gambled, the puppetry had been cellular. It wouldn't take PARIAH more than a heartbeat to recover and regain control, but that was all Alex needed, lunging forward to press hands, then biomass, into the blood, snarling in defiance.

PARIAH _screamed_ in his mind as it was consumed, the feedback of pain-fear-rage-panic a thick cocktail that seemed to claw searing lines of pain across his very soul. It was a pure battle of wills now that he had taken some of PARIAH's power into himself, and he had thousands of minds and souls within him, pushing the tempest of voices within him forward as PARIAH tried to take control.

Abruptly, the sensation retreated. Wearily, Alex forced himself to look up. The biomass had absorbed most of the blood, but the rest was flowing into Cross, not even bothering with the veins, absorbed into his skin and writhing beneath. Alex growled, dragging himself forward, his eyes on the specialist's neck. He managed to form his arm into a blade just as he blacked out.

IV

Cross rolled onto his back with a wet, agonised gasp. Liquid fire seemed to burn through every vein in his body, so much so that he was going into shock, convulsing. Memories that weren't his were tearing through his mind in a succession of images that were too quick to make out, dizzy and nauseous, Cross managed to push himself up onto his arms just as he threw up.

When there was nothing left in his stomach, Cross wiped his mouth and managed to push himself to his feet after a couple of attempts. There was an alarm pealing in the frequency and pitch that indicated a Level Zero security breach, and his first instinct was to look around for a weapon, only to step back with a low oath as he registered Mercer lying on the ground a foot away, his clothes soaked in blood, seemingly unconscious. The biomass twitched weakly as he approached cautiously, frowning, then Cross belatedly registered one further fact.

His maimed hand was whole.

Curling the new fingers to his palm incredulously, Cross looked around the room, confused; at the shattered glass from the empty cylinder in the center of the room, to the prone Mercer, then back to his hand.

"How in the _world_?"

Something – some_one_ flickered into his peripheral vision, and Cross whirled, only to see empty space. Another flicker, another blank space, and Cross stood still, concentrating. If he squinted hard enough that his eyes hurt, it almost looked like the dark, semi-transparent outline of a boy, fringe long enough to hide his eyes, a too-wide mouth bared in a silent grin.

Unnerved, Cross decided to ignore it, at least for now. The Director couldn't be very pleased with him right now, and leaving Area 51 was going to be hard enough without worrying about ghosts. Cross took a step towards the exit, paused, sighed, and turned back to pick Mercer up, ignoring how the biomass slid and writhed angrily over his bared arms.

Robert Cross always paid back his debts.

Besides, with any luck, he might even be someplace else by the time Zeus finally woke up.

-tbc-


	7. Chapter 7

[A/N: Spoilers for Prototype comic. I kinda feel sorry for the police in these sorts of fictionalized worlds (including Batman, which, in a side note, Gotham PD has a finished comic series which is very good).]

Monster's Playground

Chapter 7

I

Alex woke up with a blinding headache and to Dana peering over the edge of a month-old CLEO magazine, seated beside the bed. The hospital room smelled sterile, and a brief glance outside informed him that he was at Ragland's.

"Just so you know," Dana said carefully, "I wasn't the one who changed your pants."

Alex stared at her for a moment, then rubbed at his eyes, the biomass melting down the hospital gown and recreating denim and cotton over his body. Dana hissed in surprise.

"That is kinda gross. And cool. Can you do anything other than that wannabe biker gang hoodie jacket? Say an Armani suit? Like this one?"

Alex shoved irritably and weakly at the magazine pushed up into his line of sight. "How did I end up here?"

"Robert dropped by."

"He's still _here_?" Alex growled, struggling to sit up. Dana caught him quickly by the shoulders as he gasped and choked, bile rising in his throat, forcing him back down against the pillows with her weight.

"No. He's gone. He explained things." Dana said, settling back in her chair. "Said he was sorry. Are you all right? I've never seen you sick before. I mean, since, well, the subway. And I guess for five months before that."

"I'll be fine. I think I ate something that disagreed with me." Alex said, the edge of his lip curling. "Are _you_ all right?"

"Whatever he laced the orange juice with wore off about an hour after you guys left for Area 51." Dana said soberly. "After that, I just helped out around the hospital waiting for you to come back. I knew you'd come back."

"Nobody came back to the hospital? Military?"

"Nope. Guess I wasn't important," Dana said cheerfully, "I mean, unlike my big brother with the spiky arms."

"Heh." Alex closed his eyes, as a thought occurred to him. "Shit. What happened to all that cash?"

"Safe. Ragland had someone fetch it. It's a sight bit less than what I remember, but it's still enough to get us off Manhattan, once you're better."

"Okay." Alex murmured, dizzy again. In hindsight, an instinctive reaction – kill or be killed – in the chamber had been a remarkably stupid one after all. For all he could have known, PARIAH's blood _would_ have killed him. Hell, it _felt_ like it was killing him. Right now.

Fuck.

He had to get better. And then he would go and find Cross, and-

The ground bobs up and down, the salt scent of the sea, slippery deck, seagulls overhead, outline of Manhattan, ten gloved fingers on the rail

"What… what the hell?"

"Alex?" Dana sounded concerned. Alex waved her back, squeezing his eyes shut. The image had been so _clear_.

"Cross is on a boat out of Manhattan."

"And you just _knew_ that?"

"I can see it." Alex curled his fingers tightly into the edge of the bed. There had been an impression, an overlay of _purpose_. "He's headed to Queens."

"To the second outbreak?" Dana said, puzzled. "Why would he do that? He said he'd quit the military."

"I guess he didn't quit his vocation." Alex sank back down more comfortably onto the sheets. "Do you feel safe here?"

"Sure," Dana nodded. "It's not so bad. Martial law and gangs aside, the hospital's pretty much been left alone. Why?"

"I've got unfinished business with Cross."

Dana sighed. "I thought so. I know whatever I say isn't going to make a difference to you, but, be careful, okay?"

"I'll come back for you, Dana. Whatever happens."

"That wasn't what I meant," Dana said cryptically, raising her magazine.

II

Cross executed the runner cleanly, with a final clip from the SMG between the eyes. It had been long enough since the change that the runner didn't look human anymore, when they had fought; but in death, the infected flesh sloughed off slowly, warping into the twisted, dark-skinned features of a hispanic woman who had likely once been beautiful.

"May God have mercy on you, whoever you were," Cross murmured. The remains of what had once been the 100th precinct of the NYPD in Queens was a dark, flickering ruin choked with infected flesh and creep. For some reason, the runner had chosen to take it as her main hive. Bullet scars on the walls told Cross that the NYPD hadn't gone down quietly.

Flesh sloughed off the creature's hip, and a battered badge unstuck, rattling on the ground. Cross picked it up, rubbing a gloved finger over the scratched and pitted surface of the NYPD badge, then turned it over to look at the number. "Rest easy, officer." He slipped the badge into a vest pocket and turned to go, threading his way past hunter carcasses and over infected limbs until he could breathe easy out under the sun, ignoring the now habitual flicker at the edge of his vision.

If the ghost wasn't doing much more than hang around, Cross supposed there wasn't much else he could do about it. Perhaps it was a side effect of whatever had happened in Area 51.

As he made his way towards the bike that he had 'requisitioned' off a dead civilian some days back, Cross paused abruptly, tilting his head, then looking up. There had been _something_, a sensation, like somebody walking over his grave-

Alex Mercer was perched on a lamp post, clawed hands stretched before him. When Cross arched an eyebrow, carefully controlling his instinct to attack, Mercer grinned sharply and hopped down, landing neatly on the pavement, six feet away.

"Didn't peg you for the vigilante type," Mercer said casually, the only hint of aggression being the restlessly curling and uncurling claws. "Cross."

"Blackwatch is a little busy now from the damage done to Area 51. It wouldn't have a strike team ready to handle this." Cross jerked a thumb back at the precinct. "Without the runner, the military should be able to handle the infected."

"You," Mercer said, with deceptive mildness, "Drugged Dana, lied to us both, tricked me into going to Area 51 and into life as a lab rat."

"You escaped."

"Only because of that other Blackwatch pet," Mercer tapped at his head. "How does it feel?"

"Nothing's changed."

"Were you going to stop with the lies, or what?"

The edge in Mercer's tone made Cross shift his posture slightly, automatically preparing for a fight. "I see a ghost sometimes. A kid. It's creepy as all hell but so far it hasn't done anything to me other than stand there. That's all. What happened, anyway? I vaguely recall you going down a lift shaft, then I passed out."

Mercer ignored the question. "Didn't need any stabilizer recently?"

"No. I'm also faster, stronger than before, and I heal much more quickly. And I think I could sense you coming to me. I just didn't know what it was. What _happened_, Mercer?"

"PARIAH happened," Mercer shrugged. "Blackwatch killed him a year back, except he didn't really die."

"Sentient blood," Cross recalled slowly, from the Director's words. "Poor guy."

"Poor _guy_?"

"I've met him before. Three years ago. He wasn't right in the head – hell, who in his circumstances would be – but he wasn't too bad. Friendly, in a way."

"Yeah, well, the friendly guy used me to break into his storage chamber and smash his glass container, after which he tried to possess you, seeing as you were low on blood and out of it, and now whatever's left of him seems to be haunting you," Mercer said sarcastically. "In a friendly way."

That explained the healed fingers, but- "I don't feel much different."

"I consumed him before he finished."

Cross blinked, surprised. "You didn't know that doing that could kill you?"

"He said he was going to kill me anyway." Mercer said, if a little defensively. "And besides, he was a crazy asshole and you're a lying bastard. It'd have been a bad combination."

"Thanks," Cross said dryly. "No, I mean it. Thanks, Mercer. And I _am_ sorry about what I did to Dana. She's forgiven me, if that's worth anything to you."

"But not sorry about what you did to me?"

"I'm not sure about that," Cross replied evenly. "You do act human, especially around Dana. But you could walk down this street and kill anyone upon it without much second thought. With what you're capable of, you're too dangerous to leave running around."

"Then try to kill me." Mercer beckoned mockingly, the biomass forming spikes up his arms and shoulders.

"I don't want to." Cross said honestly.

"Afraid I'll kick your ass again?"

"Hah." Cross smiled faintly. "Well, there is that. Also," he added, as Mercer raised an eyebrow, "My reasons are a little self-serving. If Blackwatch has two targets, there won't be that much heat on me. Especially for what I want to do next, I need that."

"What are you doing next?"

"Blackwatch is headed by someone called the Director. He has a zero-tolerance policy for runners – and for anyone who tries to quit."

"You're going to kill him?"

"Sort of."

"How do you 'sort of' kill someone?"

"Killing him wouldn't solve the problem. It might worsen it. Blackwatch is in disarray now and in disgrace due to the Manhattan disaster. I know some other friends in high places."

"You want to take _over_," Mercer was certainly much smarter than he looked. "Take over Blackwatch."

"It's the only way that I can stop running. Maybe the only way I can get some answers. I wasn't interested in who I was before, but I had to think back over a lot of things during the past few days. Could be I shouldn't judge people until I know what sort of person I was before the reboot."

"Could be you had a couple of brats and a white picket fence," Mercer sneered. "Like that gives you any sort of a fucking high horse."

"If I did, then I've abandoned them for the better part of forty years," Cross said frankly. "So it wouldn't. Walk away now, Mercer. If I succeed, and you haven't caused anymore widespread mayhem, I'll do whatever I can to make sure you're left alone. Dana, too."

Mercer stared at him, head slightly tilted, clearly thinking hard. "That big dose of PARIAH blood must have fucked you in the head if you think I can still trust you."

"I'm not asking you to trust me. I'm asking you to give me a chance to show you that you should."

"Semantics." Mercer said, unimpressed, though he rocked back on his heels, and his shoulders straightened. "There's one thing I want to make sure of first."

"Whatever you want," Cross allowed, trying not to show his relief. Still, he tensed when Mercer stalked forward, taking a step back when his personal space was blithely invaded. "Mercer."

"Stand still." Clawed fingers curled around his right cheek and skull, the tip of the taloned thumb uncomfortably close to his eye. Cross gasped as Mercer nuzzled him, under his chin, more teeth than chapped lips, sniffing him, down the column of his neck to his collar. "Hn."

"What-"

"I thought maybe it was PARIAH." Mercer said conversationally, nipping hard enough at the skin to sting, tapping the tips of his claws over the nape of Cross' neck. "But I guess it wasn't." Mercer smirked at Cross' expression, his wild eyes dark and primal. "Hey, you reap what you sow, old man."

"Funny how I thought this would have been more of an encounter involving involuntary decapitation," Cross retorted, daring to be playful, the adrenaline thrill of danger and the animal way Mercer bared his teeth in challenge serving only to add to his inner predator's _want_. He didn't dare to move as claws tapped higher, over the back of his skull, then Mercer pulled him down into a kiss that was more like a bite than any expression of tenderness.

"Instinct?" Cross murmured, sucking self-consciously on his abused lower lip, when Mercer drew back.

"Instinct is telling me to push you onto the ground, right now, and put a claw to your clothes," Mercer said dryly, "Logic is alternating between telling me to take it slow, or kill you."

"Fair options." Somehow, he managed to keep his voice steady, even as his treacherous body stirred a little at the immediate mental images. Carefully, Cross stifled the impulse. Mercer was undeniably desirable – at least in this form – but he was all too aware that the claws around his temple could crush his skull easily if Mercer wanted to.

"You got me out of Area 51." The rough pad of a black forefinger claw patted him briefly over his lips. "Hell, I don't even know how you did it. For now, that makes us even."

"All right," Cross said, relieved. He _really_ didn't need a throw-down with Zeus right at this point in time. "So-"

"So since I might have a vested interest in you taking over Blackwatch, if you do need help, you know how to contact me. But," Mercer added, as Cross inhaled sharply, "If you fuck with Dana again, I'll make you eat your intestines. Clear?"

"Clear." Cross said, a little disappointed as Mercer pulled back, his clawed hands shifting back to normal.

Something must have showed on his face, as Mercer smirked. "Maybe when I'm a little more certain whether or not to trust you."

He could work with that. "Good luck to you and Dana as well," Cross paused, thinking Mercer's offer. "I might have something for you to do in a week or so."

Instead of snapping at him, Mercer merely nodded, his expression enigmatic, shoving his hands into the pockets of his jacket. "See you around, old man. Try not to die."

III

Dana counted over cash to the ferry operator on the shore of Hoboken, the scarred, bulky man glancing down at the bulky duffel bag at her feet, then behind her at her brother, and then wisely seemed to think better of it, doffing his cap gruffly in thanks and ambling back towards his crew. Alex slung the bag over his shoulder as they navigated their way up the beach in the Maxwell Place Park and up towards Sinatra Drive.

"We'll buy a second hand car," Dana decided, looking back at the outline of Manhattan behind them. "Then just keep driving up."

Alex grunted, evidently disinterested. Her brother had been in a better mood when he had returned from Queens, which suggested that Robert was still alive and whatever had happened was now water under the bridge. Dana found that reassuring. It wasn't so much that she liked Robert – which she did, spiked orange juice aside – but it indicated that Alex _was_ getting better. Even before Penn station, Alex wasn't a man who was good with forgiveness, let alone forgetting, and tended towards trying for an eye for an eye rather than turning the other cheek.

Soon they were in a used dark green Ford Focus, heading up the NJ3-W. Alex seemed content to let her drive, settled in the front passenger seat and alternating between playing with a black mobile phone and staring at the cars go past. Dana hid a grin. Sometimes, big brother could be _so_ transparent.

"Waiting for a call?"

Alex flinched visibly, then settled for a sulky glare from under his hood. "None of your business."

"Hey, I'm the driver here," Dana said teasingly. "You have someplace you want to go, let me know."

"Not yet," Alex said defensively, then added, "It's safer if you don't know too much."

"Considering you used to get me to research your enemies, _sure_."

Alex stared at her for a moment longer, then he sighed. "Cross is going to take over Blackwatch. Or try, anyway. If he succeeds, he says he'll get them to leave us alone. Then we'll only have GENTEK to deal with. I said I'll help him out."

"Oh." Trust men to have to have logical, business-related reasons to communicate. "Okay. Sounds good."

"I thought so too." Was that relief? Alex wanted to justify making up with his not-boyfriend that badly? Poor big brother had it quite bad. "Of course, if it turns out that he's lying to us again, I'll make him regret it."

"I'll leave it with you, Alex." Dana kept her eyes resolutely on the road. "At least you've definitely recovered from _your_ food poisoning." Whatever Alex had eaten to give him food poisoning, Dana didn't want to know. She had a pretty good idea that it wasn't a run of the mill burger and fries.

"Yeah. I'm in control." Alex said, not without some satisfaction. "And I can do some of what he could do. I tested it out in Queens. I can't make the infected obey me, but I can make them ignore me. Some other things, too. I haven't worked it all out."

"Okay." Sometimes Dana wasn't quite sure what Alex was talking about, but she had been used to going with the flow, even when they were kids. Alex had always had the bad habit of assuming that everyone knew or understood what he was discussing, and tended to get irritated when proven otherwise.

Abruptly the phone buzzed, and Alex picked up, putting it to his ear. "Cross." He glared at Dana when she grinned, then scowled as she winked. "Yeah. No, we're… hell, I don't know, someplace north from Hoboken. No. Yeah. What? Fine. Petrol's… whatever. And fuck you too. Yeah." Alex hung up, slouching into the seat as he shoved the phone into a jacket pocket.

"So?" Dana drummed her fingers on the steering wheel. "Where next?"

"Rhode Island." Alex said, looking out of the window, the tension going out of his shoulders, biomass retreating into fabric and skin, and added, almost as an afterthought, "Goddamn bastard."

Dana hid her smile, changing lanes and heading for the nearest exit on the freeway, trying to think of the best way to get onto the I95-N. Alex closed his eyes as she reached forward to switch on the radio, the sun creeping up his chin as the car turned east.

-fin monster's playground… thanks for reading! I will add to the fic by way of oneshot updates, sooner or later, now that the background setup of powering up Cross and giving the both of them some sort of combined purpose is over and done with. I do hope to move the fic into R18 at some point.-


	8. Chapter 8

[A/N: Readers familiar with my work will know that this is my preferred format for fiction :3 This fic assumes that readers are familiar with American politics, and yes, Blackwatch is very similar to Marvel's SHIELD.]

Monster's Favor

I

When Alex landed on the rooftop of the office building in a crunch of cracking concrete, Cross pivoted, the muzzle of his rifle coming up sharply, then lowering as the soldier acknowledged him with a curt nod. A mobile phone was cradled between shoulder and neck as Cross turned back to regard the dark smoke rising from the Blackwatch facility on Providence, Rhode Island, the sharp silver sliver of Providence river, the distant white outlines of boats and ships.

"… yeah, I get that, sir."

Alex arched an eyebrow at the honorific, even as Cross brought the sniper sight up to his right eye, scanning the road.

"No shit. Yeah… and how's that going for you in a re-election year? Run out of dead fish? Could send you some… No sir. Afraid not. Yeah, another 'Katrina', so I hear. Hah. No. Yeah, he's right here, actually… Rhode Island, yes sir. 'Fraid not, sir. It's a free country. All due respect."

Cross lowered the sniper rifle, after a long pause, then he snorted. "No sir. Yeah, that's my 'game'. No. Didn't you guys run on 'transparency' the last time? Okay. Not you, him. Yeah… well, if you really want to know, I voted for him. Hah. I'm willing to bet on him this time round, yeah? No, didn't talk to her. Crazy woman. _I_ don't go around shooting endangered species from helicopters… no. Yeah. Those are my terms. Good _afternoon_ to you too."

Cross hung up, slipping the phone back into his vest. "Good work."

Alex shrugged, eyeing the specialist warily. "Who was that?"

"I mentioned I still had friends in high places, didn't I."

"So?"

"Never kept up with national politics?"

"Waste of time."

Cross shook his head slowly, as though in pity, but made no comment. "It's a re-election year. Manhattan and Queens are a political disaster for the incumbent President, unless he can find some sort of way to get it to work in his favor. That's where we come in."

"Millions of people have _already_ died." Alex pointed out.

"You don't understand American politics," Cross jerked his head in the direction of Rhode Island. "Blackwatch has been sitting pretty out of Presidential influence for decades, because it's black ops. That's going to stop."

"Is that why you had me steal all those crates from Rhode Island?"

"The Director and his predecessor were pack rats. They don't trust live servers, so everything's physically documented. We're going to engineer a leak to all the major newspapers the United States. I've given my friend some time to prep the President for the fallout. If they do it properly, there's a fair chance that they'll come out on top."

Alex mulled this over, frowning as he stared down at the street. Passers-by ambled past on the sidewalk, unaware, each wrapped so much in their own mundane lives that only a few even stopped to watch the plume of dark smoke creeping up towards the clouds in the distance.

"Anything in there about Dana and I?"

"Yes." Cross said soberly. "That's why I'm going to let the two of you decide what gets out and what gets redacted."

"You mean, you're going to put the job of editing that fuck ton of paperwork we just stole from that military base on our laps."

"Delegation," Cross said, without missing a beat, though he smiled faintly. "Would you trust me to do it?"

"I fucking hate you." Alex scowled. "You can go through the early stuff. That shouldn't have anything about us."

"Besides, your name was already splashed all over the news during the Manhattan incident." Cross shrugged. "Even if you redact documents now, it might not be much damage control."

"At the very least, I want to keep Dana out of it." Alex allowed. Cross had a point. "I'm a shape shifter. If it's not about her, I don't give a fuck about what name or face gets pinned up on the news."

"All right."

"So we're going to engineer a 'leak', hope to God that the so-called right guy gets voted back in, and then you can put away your retirement plans?" Alex drawled. "I hope your magic friend in the clouds comes through."

"I'm a veteran of all of the Incidents and I've killed two out of the four runners, the third having been killed by the fourth, and I'm on apparent speaking terms with the said fourth," Cross said wryly. "Politically speaking, I won't be a bad choice. If we can work fast enough, and if the Administration gets off its ass, I might even be installed _before_ the worst of the campaigns."

"You're also not entirely human."

"Probably status quo for a politician," Cross deadpanned, and grinned when Alex scowled. "Let me worry about that. Did you get the documents to the place I mentioned?"

"Yeah."

"You left your sister there?"

"Your 'friends' were a lot friendlier once I put some claws through a brick wall. Who are they, anyway?"

"Not everyone in Blackwatch is happy with the status quo," Cross said, if evasively. "I've also managed to get Ragland to agree to come over from Manhattan and join us. That will make it easier for some soldiers to defect."

"Great. I'll go prepare sausages for the fucking kumbaya." Alex said flatly. "Seeing as I might have killed some of their friends, I can see how we're going to get along _real_ well."

"You've tried to kill _me_."

"Yeah, and who started _that_?"

"My point is," Cross said patiently, "That people adapt. Especially in necessity."

"Friends until no longer required, huh."

"You," the specialist said, with a hint of exasperation, stalking forward to drag him close despite Alex's hiss and the sudden claws curled tight over Kevlar-clad shoulders, "Can be so _fucking_ trying."

"Yeah? And you… hnn!" Silenced with a rough kiss, Alex debated briefly between sinking all ten claws into Cross' shoulder or biting hard enough to rip flesh, and settled for pushing back with a low growl as a tongue pushed into his mouth. Gun oil, Kevlar, gunpowder, sun-warmed skin and sweat; eyes closed, throat rumbling, the lingering shred of borrowed humanity within him mimed breathing, in, then out, harshly.

1.0

It always took about a couple of seconds whenever Mercer dragged Cross close to register the hard press of lips over his mouth as a kiss, and then he would be too busy trying not to react badly to the rough rasp of claws against his skin to do much more than stand still and let Zeus do whatever he wanted. Sharpened senses always went into overdrive, this close to Mercer; Zeus always smelled faintly of blood-copper and other metallic scents, sun-warmed leather and an almost reptilian musk. It was nowhere near human any longer and hell, it always made his mouth water.

The warehouse wasn't an optimum place for horsing around, particularly with Dana and his team going over the documents just a layer of concrete and a rusting steel door away, a floor down; the sub-storage room stank of rotting cardboard, the only light in the room a dim haze through the drifting motes of dust drifting past the gash of a skylight high against the wall. The shadows writhed in black and crimson as Cross sank teeth into the surprisingly soft skin of Mercer's neck and _tugged_; felt the smooth column of flesh rumble into a warning growl.

A claw sliced pointedly over the collar of his jacket and dragged a stinging line over the curve of his shoulder, and Cross choked out a laugh against Mercer's throat as he obligingly began to unbuckle the bulletproof vest, pausing when claws curled over his skull and crunched against the concrete wall, as teeth latched on to his ear and _bit_. Cross crushed their mouths together again as he dragged insistently at Mercer's clothes, shuddering as he felt the fabric melt into metallic biomass, then into warm, compact muscle.

"Convenient," Cross said, the word thick with blood from his mauled lip.

Mercer smirked and yanked him back down, licking into his mouth with hungry relish as Cross scratched the blunt tips of his thumbnails over pebbling nipples, growled as Mercer hissed and arched, long legs wrapping around his waist. The amount of PARIAH blood that Mercer had consumed had thankfully built up some sort of immunity; Cross bit down on a groan as Zeus sucked hard over the wound.

The skin under Cross' callused palms twitched and mottled into scales, then smooth armor, then back to flesh, feverish to the touch when hands dragged roughly down hips to flanks to hook thumbs into the hem of Mercer's jeans.

"How far do you want to go?" He could barely recognize the hoarse rasp of his voice, teeth scraping over Mercer's jaw, breathing in shallow pants. Zeus, on the other hand, was utterly still, doll-like, perched precariously as he was on the edge of a dusty work table, talon tips tapping and skittering over abused concrete.

"How far do _you_ want to go?" Mercer retorted, his lip curling, facetious, challenging, as biomass crept in a red and black infection up smooth muscle to his shoulders, sheathing his arms in corrugated, twisted red and black iron, whorls of alien flesh twisting around his neck, almost tight enough to choke.

Cross didn't flinch; didn't want to give Mercer any grounds to pull out, baring his teeth instead and leaning closer to breathe, lips to lips, "All the way," and added, as the tip of a warm tongue flicked possessively over his lip, "If you want it."

The biomass around his throat squeezed harder, until Cross choked and curled his fingers tightly over Mercer's hips, bruising, then dropped away, and Mercer was sprawling back against the wall, sunk against the table, hooking the heel of a sneaker over Cross' right shoulder, curling a pink tongue up to lap over his own reddened mouth.

"Do it," Mercer purred, legs pulling wide, eyes dark with glittering lust, grinding back, roughly enough for Cross to wince and force Mercer back down over the table, old wood creaking in protest. "If you dare."

Cross slapped Mercer high against his thigh, making Zeus growl with a thrumming rumble far too deep for a human throat, clenching his hand over the denim and never breaking eye contact, not _daring_ to; violence and bloodlust seemed to be a rich aphrodisiac. His own cock was already straining in his pants, the ache sharp and heady. "Take this off then."

Mercer grinned sharply at him, and Cross tried not to stare too hard at how the biomass melted into the metallic, twisted black sheen of its organic armor, then into flesh. Carefully, he took the thankfully normal-looking cock in a gloved hand and squeezed experimentally, then harder, when Mercer laughed mockingly.

"Afraid, soldier?"

"Cell by cell copy, huh," Cross rubbed one leather-clad thumb hard over the swelling tip, dragged Mercer roughly against him as he snarled, the _hunger_ in that tone not quite bloodthirst, not quite lust, the animal sound jolting an answering _need_ within him. "I thought you'd have embellished."

"Hah, hah," Mercer drawled. "You want to shut up and do this, or piss me off?"

"I'll shut up." It was better not to push his luck, but Mercer's right eyebrow rose.

"You're _really_ going to… _fuck_," Mercer's eyes narrowed as Cross pulled off a glove with his teeth and dropped it carelessly on the desk, his other hand stroking firming flesh slowly, roughly.

"That's the general idea," Cross deadpanned, smirking as Mercer scowled.

"And you're not afraid at all." Biomass sloughed and pooled up into fins, then spikes, over Mercer's upper arms, and Cross couldn't deny the way his cock twitched at the sight. Perhaps it was perversion, or the blood-scent and the growing scent of sex, the sticky translucent fluid beading at the reddening tip.

"I thought you could sense that," Cross said mildly, as gently as he could in the circumstances, leaning close to tug Mercer's chin towards him with bared fingers. "I trust you."

Mercer inhaled sharply at that, his lean frame shuddering against Cross, hands creeping hesitantly up his shoulders for a heartbeat, then sheathing into claws as Mercer pushed himself back up against the concrete wall, his narrowed eyes enigmatic as he jammed all ten claws back into the wall with an audible _crunch_. "I think I told you to shut up."

Cross nodded, pressing the pads of three fingers against Mercer's mouth, and it took a little frown before Zeus realized what he was trying to do, handsome features assuming the momentarily distant expression he took whenever consulting consumed memories. Before Cross could explain, Mercer focused, leaning forward to take the fingers into his mouth willingly enough, rasping his tongue over the digits, slowly at first, then with more confidence.

It took a second try to work the belt, then the buttons and zipper on his own pants; the stifling room felt too _hot_ when Mercer moaned around the fingers and began to suck. Cross' brain supplied an all too seductive image of those lips stretched someplace further southward, instead, over his cock; it would thicken and Mercer would moan, would gag, claws would sink shallowly into his hip, but he would still curl his own hands into Zeus' short hair and push _forward_-

Swallowing, his throat abruptly dry, Cross pulled out his fingers, allowing himself to be pulled down into another savage kiss, chuckling at the unhappy back-of-the-throat rumble that Zeus made as his tongue rasped over freshly healed flesh. He rubbed slicked fingers over Mercer's opening, slow, wrapping his free hand around the small of his back, whispering, "Bleed me if you want."

Mercer _growled_ again, in that primal, liquid bestial sound all that humanity feared of the monster in the shadows, as Cross braced himself, not even shuddering as claws sliced the straps of the bulletproof vest off him, dumping the heavy material on the table, then slit his jacket open, buttons pinging off the ground and the table, the claw pressed deliberately far enough to draw a shallow red line from the hollow of his neck to his belly.

"Going to be difficult to explain," Cross said dryly, as Mercer leaned forward, lapped a greedy stripe up the seeping wound, gently smearing the blood too low to reach over his skin, the crimson fluid melting into the biomass, claws to soft palms again.

"I _told_ you to shut up. Christ." Mercer's voice was slurring on the consonants, as though drugged, his cock throbbing against Cross' belly. "And hurry the fuck up."

Cross hadn't been really sure what would happen when he pushed the first finger into Mercer's body, and was a little relieved when the biomass didn't react violently. Mercer grunted, digging thankfully blunt fingernails into Cross' shoulders as he worked the finger deeper into the tight heat.

Zeus' body temperature was a few degrees higher than a human's, the heat feverish as he pushed in another finger, stilling instantly when Mercer shook violently against him with a choked sound, pressing _deeper_ only when nails scratched impatiently over his shoulders with a harsh, "Keep going."

At three fingers, Mercer was miming breathing in shallow pants, his expression distant again, as if trying to cross-reference the sensation or, more likely, probably trying to decide whether or not to kill Cross over the pain that the specialist knew he had to be causing, callused fingers slicked only with spit and pressed this deep into a virgin-tight body. It took a couple of hasty attempts before crooking fingers finally elicited a full-body twitch and a gasp of startled pleasure, then a moan and teeth sinking hard into the juncture between his neck and his collar as Cross thrust fingers _up_ and _harder_.

"Fuck!" Narrow hips stuttered over his fingers, Mercer's cock flushing so dark with his arousal that it was almost purple, drawing a translucent trail drawn from the tip over Mercer's belly. "Again."

"Don't finish before we've even started," Cross said, his words earning him an angry glare and legs wrapping more tightly around his waist. Mercer dragged a palm down over the drying blood over his belly, ignoring the pained hiss, then reached further down and stroked him pointedly, too roughly for pleasure, smirking at the wince.

Taking the broad hint for what it was, Cross pulled out his fingers and spat of his palm to slick himself further. Mercer had his fingers curled so tightly over the edge of the table that wood was beginning to splinter, the only sign of his unease as he watched Cross line up the thick head against his wet opening.

"You ready?" Cross asked, hoarse with _need_, already sweating under his jacket and vaguely regretting the urgency. He wasn't a romantic man by any measure, but there were better places to have a first time.

Mercer, however, nodded curtly, gritting his teeth, then exhaling harshly as he forced himself to relax, wood crunching under his fingers as Cross pushed slowly _in_, a hand on Mercer's hip and the other curled around the nape of his neck. Tight… Mercer was _so_ tight, uncomfortably so, and a sudden clench of muscle made Cross hiss and flinch.

"Shit," Mercer gasped, then, to Cross' surprise, added "Sorry," and then gave a choked, raspy laugh as Cross pressed deeper, further, until he was fully seated. "Jesus _Christ_. This _fucking_ hurts."

Cross concentrated on stroking his hand soothingly up and down Mercer's back, nuzzling the sweat-sheen over his neck and hunched shoulders, rubbing a thumb over the tight curve of Mercer's spine, trying his best not to think about how sinfully _good_ it was to be hilted like this now that the tight grip of muscle was beginning to relax. The air was heavy with the scent of sex and the copper-tang of his own blood, the inhuman musk of the biomass as it wrapped whorls of organic metal over his elbows and his hands, stroking over the sensitive underside of palms and wrists, then dragging them back down to Mercer's hips as the body he was so deeply buried into loosened slowly further.

At the first tentative thrust, Mercer snarled, and the flat of his left heel kicked lightly but insistently at the small of Cross' back. He smirked in answer, bending Mercer further back over the table, pulling ankles over his shoulders, and at the first rough thrust Mercer's right hand crushed the wood in his grasp, the table groaning in warning under dueling forces as Mercer's spine snapped up into a tight arch.

"What… the _fuck…!_" Mercer moaned, as Cross gave up with the table and scooped Zeus without preamble into his arms, shifting over to the bare wall between the table and the shelves, pulling thighs over his elbows and easily supporting Mercer's weight. Claws punched deep into the concrete as he snapped his hips upwards, slamming Mercer against the wall; the angry snarl melted into a harsh cry of ecstasy as Cross shifted, adjusting, and snapped up again, this time roughly up against Mercer's prostate.

Biomass from shoulders and arms anchored Mercer automatically up against the wall with spikes and hooks as Mercer bucked down to meet the brutal rhythm, the next kiss again more of a bite that had Cross almost choking as Mercer lapped hungrily into his mouth, then he snapped back against the wall in another tight bow, keening as he was seated again balls-deep against Cross' hips. Cross was vaguely aware that he himself was talking, in a broken analog of curses and fumbled praises, folding his arm against Mercer's back and closing the fingers of his right hand tightly over Mercer's cock, fisting it in time with their furious pace.

It didn't take long for Mercer's body to seize up in violent orgasm, spurting hot fluid over the hard planes of his belly and chest. Shuddering with the intensity of his own arousal, so _close_ to the edge, Cross continued to rock into the shaking frame until the tremors subsided, then Mercer frowned as he pulled out, slumping in his arms as the biomass anchors in the wall slid back into his flesh.

"Cross?" The question was breathy, uncertain, as Cross pressed a slanting kiss against the edge of Mercer's mouth.

"Turn around and brace yourself against the wall," Cross commanded, and Mercer stared uncomprehendingly at him for a moment before he did so, claws flattening out into splayed hands, then into dense fists as Cross slammed back inside, making him yelp and twist tightly back against Cross' chest.

Cross slicked his hand with Mercer's come before slipping fingers back over slowly limp flesh. Mercer whined at the next violent thrust, moaned at the second, then bucked back at the third, and his cock twitched in Cross' grasp, hardening slowly under the attention.

"B… bastard," Mercer managed to gasp wetly, "I don't think I can… oh, fuck _you_," his voice hitched and he trembled visibly as Cross drove back inside him, rolling his hips as he did so. "Uhh! Fuck, _fuck_-"

"We'll do this a little slower," Cross purred, as Mercer shivered, pressed flush against him. "But I think I can make you come again."

"Shit," Mercer swore, shakily, dense fingers curling into fists, then he bowed his head and laughed, a harsh, barking sound, wound to breaking point with desire. "Then stop talking and prove it, old man."

II

Dana had been the one who had set up the document scanning hardware, a sleek machine that sucked in paper slotted into it and converted it into easily combined pdfs on her laptop instantly. Ragland had arrived with it early one morning, after a few phone calls from Cross interspersed with comments from Dana, and as of late evening on the next day, all of the paperwork had been scanned through.

In the end, they had redacted only Dana's name from the paperwork, and an unmarked folder from the piles that Cross had flipped through and had then promptly confiscated. He had said no word about it to Alex, and Alex hadn't asked. Whatever it was, particularly if it was private material about Cross' previous life, a man was entitled to his secrets. The night everything had been scanned up, they'd broken the cot that Cross had been using as a bed in one of the warehouse rooms; still joined, Alex had then rolled them onto the cold concrete floor, ignoring Cross' murmured protests, and ridden the soldier hard until bruises reddened over hips and his lower back. Sex and violence were separate pleasures to the creature born to the latter in Penn Station; the carnal act with Cross was both yet neither.

That had been three days ago.

Alex stepped carefully into the burned floor of the office building, wary of snipers. He wore the skin of a paramedic, ostensibly on stand-by with the recovery crew. Three days ago Cross had divided the massive file upload between four teams and had set them to different secure upload locations, apparently provided by his friend in the clouds, set to go at a certain time.

Alex's team, being himself, Dana and Ragland, had just completed the multiple recipient upload when Ragland had switched on the television in the hotel room they were holed up in. Cross' location had been bombed. That had been two days ago.

One day ago Alex had left Dana and Ragland someplace safe, outside of Rhode Island, before returning; the ugly, sick turmoil within him perhaps only a different flavor of vengeance, or so he told himself. If Cross had been in the building when the bomb had gone off, then he would be dead, and rushing back immediately, leaving Dana at an unsecured location, would have been falling into GENTEK and Blackwatch's trap. As it was, Alex had only come back because the link that their shared PARIAH blood provided after the incident in Area 51 had been insistent that Cross was still alive.

Alex watched as rubble was being laboriously cleared by the clean-up crew, under the watchful gazes of scuttling police. GENTEK and Blackwatch had been long gone, leaving no traces behind; it had been a professional hit. Already the news was calling it terrorism.

Excited shouts as the clean-up crew used a blowtorch to cut away a jammed door blasted black from explosives made Alex jog over to take a look, his nerves wire-thin and coiled tight. At the first sight of the body pulled from under the rubble, he curled his fingers into his palms and breathed out.

The burns were healing faster than humanly possible, that much Alex could see, though the process was thankfully concealed to the normal human eye under all that soot. Broken leg, already knitting. Gashes, already closing. Cross, amazingly, was conscious enough to scan the crowd, recognize him from their link, and shoot him a pointed, if weary stare. Alex followed the paramedics discreetly as they loaded Cross into an ambulance, circling around the lingering news crews bleating around the 'miracle' and snapping photographs, stepping up into the ambulance beside the stretcher.

"You're a lucky bastard," he told Cross, in his stolen voice. Cross smirked at him and somehow managed to reach out to squeeze his fingers lightly, before finally losing consciousness.

One block away and on its way to the hospital, the ambulance abruptly came to a stop in the middle of traffic, then took a sharp right turn.

2.0

Cross woke up to the angry buzzing of his phone next to his ear. Dana grinned at him mischievously when he rubbed his eyes, almost entangling himself in the tubing of the intravenous drip, giggled when he rolled his eyes at her, then padded out of the room and closed the door as he picked up.

They were in some rented apartment a mile out of Rhode Island, apparently, with an immediate view of the brick wall of the next building just a couple of metres away. He had spent most of his time since the upload sleeping and allowing Ragland and his enhanced blood to repair the damage, drifting in and out of consciousness over a week, too tired even to listen to Dana's updates on the situation or focus on Mercer's occasional snarky visits. As far as he could tell-

"Cross here."

"You bloody motherfucker." The current White House Chief of Staff was as fiery as his reputation suggested. Cross had met him in person only once, during the Clinton Administration, during a rather awkward Meet the Team confidential visit that the then-President had paid Blackwatch, and had received the instant mental impression of a small, vicious and high-energy terrier, always itching for a fight. Cross had liked him instantly.

"Good…" Cross paused, checking the small sliver of sky that he could see from his bedside window, "Afternoon, sir."

"Maybe _you're_ having a good fucking afternoon but it's all fire and goddamn brimstone on _this_ end, you arsehole," the Chief of Staff snarled into the phone. "It's a good thing you survived that bomb blast. I need to kick your fucking ass."

"I thought we agreed that it was all about spin, sir," Cross said cheerfully, holding the phone briefly away from his ear until the expletives trailed away. "Look. Whatever your guy did over the past four years, even if it was to go walk out in the sun and hold babies, the Republicans were going to try and crucify him for it anyway, so-"

"It's not about the fucking Republicans! When you said you were going to make a fucking splash you seriously didn't dick about, did you? You and your goddamn _friends_ went and fucking _vomited_ every single confidential document held by Blackwatch out on the _bloody_ free press! There was shit out there that even _I_ didn't know about! You could have given us a little more of a heads up!"

"I keep your life interesting, sir," Cross said, untroubled. "Get the President to call for one of his bipartisan investigation panels or something. Isn't that the usual deal with you Democrats?"

"The President is furious," the Chief of Staff snapped. "Heads are fucking rolling like no tomorrow. The goddamn media is having a field day… a field _week_, the public wants blood, and you've just about fucking set up our entire fucking _military_ system. You're not the most popular person with the President right now."

"I found an old folder in there," Cross interrupted blandly. "It seems myself, and the original batches of experiments, unlike the others in the later years, hadn't done it voluntarily. We were all people the military wanted to get rid of. Either we'd pissed off the wrong people, or, more often than not, we'd fancied folks of the same gender. Copies of birth certificates, military records – all American soldiers. I was the sole survivor of my batch and all of those before me. Some of the others were kids, eighteen, nineteen-year-olds."

The line went quiet for a long time, then, a little more subdued, "Hell, I-"

"So be a little grateful that I kept _that_ from leaking, sir," Cross pointed out mildly. "For now."

"If you're… oh, you're fucking _threatening_ me, you motherfucking _asshole_." The flavor of anger in the Chief of Staff's voice, however, had subtly changed, and Cross guessed that at least where the Chief of Staff was concerned, negotiating some sort of resolution with the Director had just gone out of the window.

"You know what I want, sir."

"Dick." The line went dead. Cross smiled ironically and faintly to himself, closed his eyes, and dropped it on the dresser.

III

Alex tuned out the short, Jewish, foul-mouthed man with the salt-and pepper hair who was chewing out Cross in the corridor, instead looking around them in the narrow corridor of a bunker somewhere deep underneath the Pentagon and feeling a little claustrophobic. He was wearing the skin of a Blackwatch soldier unlucky enough to be caught snooping around the apartment a couple of days back, currently here disguised (in a sense) as Cross' personal assistant.

Cross took the expletive-laced lecture in good humor, occasionally interjecting with comments that only seemed to feed the man's rage. The Secret Service agents were looking uneasily between Cross and the shorter man, but since Alex and Cross had shown up weaponless, at least he was being ignored.

Eventually, the tirade came to a halt, and Alex found himself being eyeballed by the Jewish man. "And who the hell is this poor bugger?"

"Who do you think he is?" Cross said mildly, and the man narrowed his eyes, glaring between them both, then he abruptly took a step back.

"Oh, you goddamned _motherfucker_."

"He's not contagious," Cross seemed oblivious to the nervous ripple of fear and the growing scents of confused aggression in the Secret Service agents around them. Alex tensed, but kept the biomass in check, for now.

"Do you _realize_ how much of a _disaster_ this could be if it got out that the President was within ten _fucking_ feet of-"

"It's all about spin, isn't it?" Cross said genially. "Why don't you head back and talk to the Man. If he'd rather we go, we'll go."

Cross was called a number of filthy names, but the man disappeared into the room at the end of the corridor. Uncomfortably, Alex edged a little closer to Cross, calculating the projection trajectory of spikes or his whip fist if abrupt extraction became necessary. "What did you do that for?"

"Do what?"

"Drop your fucking innocent act, Cross. It isn't cute."

"He had to know eventually," Cross said seriously, then added, with a grin, "Besides, since you're with me, this meeting would have had to happen sooner or later."

"You mean if they don't decide to smoke us now."

"I'll give this Administration – or what's left of it – a little more credit than that," Cross said, even as an agent stepped out of the room.

"The President will see the both of you now."

3.0

Sometime after the second debriefing, then the third, the fourth, a long line of lectures and then the inevitable press conference, Cross was finally given a breath of time to himself. Mercer sat in a boneless sprawl over the high-backed leather chair at the new desk, one leg hooked over the armrest and his arms dangling over the other. Cross stared out of the window at the vast south parking lot of the Pentagon, and further at the outline of Pentagon City, and for a brief, frozen moment, wondered what the hell he had just gotten himself into.

The Director was still on the loose, having fled his office at the faintest hint of trouble, he and a band of Blackwatch still loyal personally to him, but at present, and for the first time perhaps in Cross' life since receiving enhanced blood, the Director had become a background problem. Right now, Cross wasn't sure if that was a _good_ thing.

"It's nice of them to give you a big office that isn't technically yours until the guy you've bet on wins. If. He wins." Mercer drawled from the chair.

Dana was off exploring the Pentagon with office staff, her entire attitude to the fiasco that of enjoying an extended personal holiday than any sort of apparent understanding of the magnitude of the occasion, as were the remnants of his team, and Cross supposed that there were still some things he could still be grateful for.

"They want the firefighting to start immediately before they decide whether or not to pay me." Cross returned wryly, summarizing the situation, folding his arms behind his back, "And as for you-"

"They want something terminal to happen, in the next few weeks, to the wars that they haven't managed to end for the past… hell, eleven years or so?"

"It's well within your right to-"

"Do you want this," Mercer swept a hand out impatiently to encompass the empty office, "Or not?"

There was a veiled question there beneath the immediate query, but Cross ignored it. "Of course."

"Then I'll go and get airdropped into Afghanistan or Iraq or whatever by the end of this week, and thank you kindly to take care of Dana in the meantime. Of course," Mercer added philosophically, "The Administration has to be bloody idiots to think that wars can be 'won' by military force."

"They don't want you to win the war, Mercer, just to-"

"Scare the hell out of some terrorists, I know." Mercer stared at him, upside-down, his expression sober and uncomfortably direct. "Like loosing an untraceable nuclear weapon."

"Orders from higher up."

"If I do it, it'll be because _you_ want me to, Cross," Mercer said simply, though he turned his eyes back up, at the ceiling. "The President seems like a nice guy, but I don't give a fuck what he wants me to do."

The President had seemed pained by the entire situation, Cross thought, but innately, through and through he was a politician, and an end to both the Afghanistan and Iraq insurgencies would be a boost to his approval rating, if Mercer could do it within a few short weeks. It seemed impossible, but Cross had had a lifetime dealing with the impossible. "I could go with you."

"As though I need a goddamn babysitter. Besides, I think you should stay here. See if the air agrees with you."

Cross sighed, walking over to the chair and planting his palms on Mercer's shoulders, looking down. "This would be as much your choice as mine, Alex. If you want to walk away, then we walk away."

Mercer froze when called by his first name, his eyes unreadable as he kept his stare, then he flicked his tongue over his upper lip, absently. "Remember when I said I didn't want to become a walking weapon for the military?"

"Yeah."

"I'm rethinking," Mercer said tightly, looking away. "Dana seems happy. Safe."

"Couldn't say for sure, given who she is to you," Cross resorted to honesty in the face of his uncomfortable realization of the absolute trust Mercer had decided, somewhere along the line, to place on his shoulders. He wasn't so sure if he'd _earned_ it. "But-"

Mercer exhaled loudly, but instead of the spark of temper that Cross was expecting, he thumped the heel of his right foot against the edge of the heavy desk. "This is a nice, big table."

"I guess." Cross frowned, a little thrown by the non-sequitur.

"How about you scoot down on your knees under it and we christen your chair," Mercer smirked, his tongue flicking out again, this time over his lower lip. "Kick start your possibly extremely short tenure in high office with a few good memories."

"Could try," Cross said, pretending to eye the space under the table critically, then bending down for parting lips as whorls of organic metal curled insistently over his shoulders, seething possessively over the back of his skull; another frozen moment in time, this time _perfect_, the shaft of sunlight from the window creeping slowly up the back of his legs.

-fin… first oneshot. I feel like doing more, mission-based-ish ones from after Cross becomes the Director, we'll see. I wrote this on and off over the week, so I do know it needs a lot of editing. As before, if you spot errors, please let me know. And yes, I don't feel comfortable using betas.-


	9. Chapter 9

[A/N: Don't Ask, Don't Tell ("DADT") might soon be repealed in the USA. : ) It's been passed by the House. This piece is written in support. Critical vote coming at the Senate. .com/2010/05/27/senate-armed-services-com_n_

This will be a more Cross-centric piece. I've noted that readers have trouble following my timelines when I try to write non-sequential fiction, so I'll put in some indicatives. Queens purge = Cross' execution of the runner in Queens (the comic book's detective).]

The Other Tomorrow

I

scrap from folder confiscated by R. Cross from Blackwatch Confidential materials | circa 1971 | redacted letter | unknown author

Dear Mom and Dad,

Somehow They've found me out. I was so careful. I know I should have listened to you in the first place, but being a soldier, protecting my country, was all I ever wanted to do. They've taken me to –REDACTED-, they say it's for a special training course but I know better. It's too soon after –REDACTED- might have seen me walking out with –REDACTED- in –REDACTED-. I was so careful. Five years I was careful.

There're too many kids here just out of eighteen, nineteen, for this to be a special course. Kids. Everyone knows why we're here. We know what each of us are. There's some older folks here, hell, there's this guy maybe in his late thirties, shock of white hair on black, eyes like he's seen the gates of hell and back. He's been in 'Nam, he says, and he won't say more. A _veteran_. And I think he's not the only one. Most of the rest of us here don't look like home corps. I think they're going to –REDACTED- us.

I don't know if this will reach you and I guess it probably never will. I love you. I want you to know that even if I don't see tomorrow, what I am now and what I have been was all I ever wanted to do with my life. I don't want you to be angry. I don't want you to blame yourselves. Had I finished school and gone to work as some paper pusher behind a desk, I'd have been unhappy the rest of my life. Maybe whatever is happening now is for some sort of good. Someday in the future it will all be all right. That's what I believe.

My name's been called. I'm giving this letter and my dog tags to the 'Nam vet with the white and black hair. He says if he can he'll get the letter and the tags to you. I smile and I look into his eyes and I know we both know we aren't going to come out of this –REDACTED-. Please give my sister and –REDACTED- my love as well.

Love

Your son

interim status report | circa 1971 | doctor e. e. riesland

Success at last, perhaps. One Subject in the E-19 batch has survived the assimilation. Heart rate accelerated but acceptable and stable. Body temperature at 37.5 degrees celcius but there is nothing to be concerned about for now. He has yet to wake but we are feeling confident. Brain activity remains normal. The Subject has been christened 'Alpha' by the Director.

Subject Alpha is a 38-year-old healthy white human male, no observed abnormalities in bone or organ structure. Blood type A+. Blood pressure a little higher than normal, but like the temperature there is little to be concerned about at present. Scarring over right arm and concentrated scarring over lower back and left thigh, probably from explosives during deployment in the Vietnam war. Last known designated rank, Sergeant Major, United States Army. Family history of heart attacks but no other serious hereditary problems.

Should he awaken, we will have made history.

1.0

.one day after the Queens purge

When Cross was alone and winding down instead of battling runners or stalking infected, the haunting could _really_ claw at his nerves. He was sitting in the sun, in a fairly decent café someplace east enough of Queens that life was perceptibly normal, trying to enjoy a passable steak sandwich and a bloody good espresso, and the ghost was grinning at him from the edge of his vision, gone whenever he reflexively turned around.

He didn't remember PARIAH being a child, but then, he had only been introduced to PARIAH in the last few years of the monster's life, when it had begun to be unmanageable and the Director had tried throwing Blackwatch's most outdated (systems-wise) and therefore expendable soldier at it in an attempt to calm it down.

The too-wide smile was unnerving as hell. PARIAH had never smiled, in the few sessions that they'd been allowed, and _he _had had to do most of the talking. The creature had few human thought functions and a shaky grasp of human speech, illiterate, mostly a being of basic wants and hatred.

He didn't blame PARIAH for turning out that way. Hell, had he woken up _that _young in GENTEK's dubious care, _Cross_ would have turned out that way. PARIAH had taken to him well enough but it had been all too clear that given the chance or any provocation, PARIAH would kill him.

GENTEK had been using PARIAH to produce a cure – not so much an upgrade for the military, but a cure for mortality, Cross had surmised, during the few and far between visits he had (reluctantly) paid to the Facility. Just as it had been using Greene to create a specific biological weapon. Cross had never been sure if he wanted to know how both goals added up, and had an ugly impression that the government knew as little about it as he did.

The plagues caused by Greene or any of the runners were uncontrollable and indiscriminately destructive. They would in no way be viable weapons for the purposes of global war, save possibly as a deterrent, and even then, public opinion towards their deployment would likely be extremely hostile. Cross had briefly entertained the possibility that the desired end result had been something like Zeus, a sentient, non-contagious human-shaped weapon that could be reasoned with and follow orders, but listening to GENTEK chatter over the past few weeks had given him the impression that Zeus was an unintentional – if welcome (at least at the beginning) – fluke.

Perhaps GENTEK had wanted something else altogether.

Thinking this over, Cross sat up sharply, nearly spilling his espresso, as the ghost in the edge of his vision shambled in stuttering motions to the front, beckoning him forward. Back towards Manhattan.

The grin was gone, leaving a thin line stitched over amorphous gray.

II

scrap from folder confiscated by R. Cross from Blackwatch Confidential materials | circa 1971 | redacted letter | unknown author

Dear Sister,

The others are all writing letters since –REDACTED- did his and was called up. I don't know why we're all giving them to the 'Nam vet with the shock of white hair. I guess he's the oldest one of us here and the only one who doesn't look shit-scared to hell. Someone's given out some pens and paper. I think they're doing it to keep us quiet.

I don't want to go without you knowing the truth. I've never had any boyfriends because since I was twelve I knew I was not interested in boys. I went out with my first girlfriend when I was seventeen going on eighteen. It didn't last. Neither of us wanted our families to find out; I knew it would kill Ma. After that, I signed up for the military and I haven't looked back. I think you figured it out, though. I hope that you can understand why I can only tell you this now.

I've been taken to –REDACTED- for some sort of 'special training'. I think all of us know we won't be coming back. Vietnam happened, and in –REDACTED- while off-duty some guys from another company jumped me in the showers, and next thing I know I'm waking up on a military plane shipped off back to good ol' Uncle Sam. Could be it was all just a bloody coincidence. I never did look at any of the guys, but I didn't know any of those bastards.

I guess this is it. Don't be mad. Don't try to seek some sort of justice: I know you were always the sort. I don't want you to get into trouble because of me. Lesbians aren't allowed to serve in the military and I did. Now I'm paying for it. I hope you won't. I don't know how they'll treat my decommission but I hope Ma and Pa get a pension. I don't know how that works out. If things could be different, I don't know where I'd be and what I'd change.

Best wishes-

interim status report | subject alpha | circa 1971 | doctor p. m. arnestein

Subject Alpha is reacting well to the test stabilizer. No involuntary vomiting for two days, and we anticipate being able to start him back on solid foods tomorrow. The skin condition was temporary as predicted and the fully white shock of hair seems to be slowly fading back to black from the sideburns upwards.

Motor functions nearing normal, though uncontrollable tremors still makes exertion impossible. Throat and voice box back to normal. Responses to Rorschach test, Exner system, normal. Some indication that Subject's subconscious remembers that it was once a soldier, but no evidence of Subject's prior psychological trauma from its deployment in Vietnam. Subject appears to recall nothing of previous life including said Vietnam deployment experience.

Subject has asked questions about the project and about himself, but has accepted Scenario 3-Alpha as truth, at least for now. Once motor functions are normal, we recommend starting Subject Alpha on basic tests before progressing to re-assessing his combat potential. At present, the only quantifiable benefit of the assimilation of PARIAH blood is a visibly accelerated healing.

Recommend further study of Subject Alpha's blood type. Suggest that PARIAH compatibility may be based on the same, or on age group or general fitness. Certainly it is highly unlikely that the theory that Subject Alpha was unique, a 'fluke' as it has been suggested, is by any means scientifically correct.

One minor but curious side-effect of the PARIAH assimilation on Subject Alpha is the apparent reroute or sterilization of unnatural sex drives, judging from the lack of interest or change in heart rates when the subject was shown stimulus material. Earmarking side-effect as a potential course of further study. Future possible by-product certainly lucrative if absolute amnesia matter solved and drug marketable to the religious community.

2.0

.three days after the Queens purge

Specialist Robert Cross stood unobtrusively in a corner of the block overlooking the repair efforts on the gaping, stinking maw of a chasm that Elizabeth Greene's ill-fated last attempts to best Zeus had caused, and at the dark stain on the ground where she – or it – had died.

PARIAH was a gray outline hovering over the stain, the vague shape of his head lowered as though in grief or in thought, the amorphous blobs of fingers folded behind his back. The outline turned to grainy static, once, as one of the clean-up crew walked through it.

Cross rubbed absently at his eyes and leant against the cracked wall, all too conscious of the weapons hidden under his jacket and overcoat, of the cap that would serve as a poor disguise if anyone who knew of him got too close. Thankfully so far, none of the personnel on site were GENTEK or Blackwatch; whatever useful genetic material had long been scavenged.

Cross watched the slow process of rubble being cleared onto waiting trucks, some static-laced twanging country tune playing from a radio propped up between two rocks, baking slowly in the afternoon sun. Manhattan was returning inexorably to normalcy despite all odds, and Cross supposed wryly that this was either human strength or human folly-

"You – hey," the foreman was striding up to him. A grizzled looking man, middle-aged, hair trimmed to a tawny fuzz, sideburns creeping out from under his construction helmet, clothes dusty from the rubble. "Yeah, you."

"Can I help you, sir?" Cross asked calmly, forcing himself to relax.

"You gonna sit there all mornin' watching us work?" The foreman's genial grin took any insult from his words. "I could use any help I could get. Bloody military ain't letting us bring in as many of my boys as I'd like. We're shorthanded here and there could still be survivors in that mess."

Cross doubted it very much, eyeing the chasm critically, then glancing back at the stain. The ghost was gone; even out of his peripheral vision. Somewhat startled, Cross looked around sharply.

"Them monsters 'been long scared off, mister," the foreman said dryly, misinterpreting his reaction for fear. "You wanna help out or not?"

"I'm a soldier, sir," Cross said carefully. "I'm here on clean-up. I'll do another circle around these parts, make sure nothing's close enough to trouble you, but I think I'll leave the rest to you."

This didn't seem to placate the foreman; the grizzled man sighed, scratching at his sideburns. "Well, you do what you must. But toting those guns around ain't gonna save no one."

"Don't I know that, sir." Cross straightened and pushed himself away from the wall. Perhaps all PARIAH wanted was to make his peace with his mother's death, and his own violent end. He could hope for that much. "Don't I know that."

III

scrap from folder confiscated by R. Cross from Blackwatch Confidential materials | circa 1971 | redacted letter | unknown author

Dear J,

I don't have much time. I should have started writing earlier but I didn't want to give up on the hope that I could come home. Half of us have been called and the vet is next, so it's now or never. They said they'll give us back our stuff 'afterwards'. If anyone can survive whatever it is they want to do to us, I think it'd be him.

I said I would come back when we were sitting on –REDACTED- hill looking up at the stars, and then I would get myself decommissioned and do something else with my life, something which didn't need me to hide all the time or risk getting fired, or worse. Some of the stories the others have told, I think I was lucky. I know why I was found out. I got drunk with some guys from my company a day before I was due to ship out. Someone must have said.

I guess this is it. I have to go. I love you. I haven't stopped loving you since I told Mom and Dad, even though I got kicked out of the house and disowned in the process. We've done good for ourselves. I wish we could've done better. Maybe joining the military was pushing my luck. Maybe I could have done something better by you. If there is an afterlife, I hope you'll forgive me breaking my promise about coming home.

Love

P

interim status report | subject alpha | circa 1973 | doctor e. d. marett

Subject Alpha was admitted to the Facility three days ago with multiple critical injuries after Operation Raincheck, mainly bite and claw wounds, but no sign of infection whether latent or progressive. Blood substitute as a cure has been confirmed. Rest of Wiseman-Alpha team unfortunately did not survive the Operation.

Subject Alpha is now coherent and the accelerated healing is progressing better than expected. By all projections he should be cleared back to active duty within two weeks maximum. Psychiatric and physical checks are green.

It is unfortunate that no further subjects since Alpha have survived a pure assimilation of PARIAH material, but we have enjoyed some success since the Alpha batch with a mixture of Subject Alpha and PARIAH genetic material.

Regarding the Recommended Directive, I am not in support of deploying Subject Alpha back into the front lines in the Vietnam war. As you are aware, Subject Alpha is currently suffering from total amnesia save as to physical skills prior to assimilation, and a return to the front lines may serve as a trigger to destabilize years of careful re-tuning.

Wiseman-Beta will be cleared for combat within two weeks. It is my recommendation that Subject Alpha again be placed in charge and deployed to the Tibet facility immediately in anticipation of the controlled serial testing at Do'gyaling. The support team must be closer at hand to recover fresh genetic material – as well as incapacitated Wiseman team members where possible, dead or alive.

Do'gyaling should be able to provide us with a better indicator of the progressive nature of the viral infection, but we are interested to see how our experimentation with the mutation trigger may manifest in the test subjects. We have so far proven through the Wiseman subjects that speed and healing can be ameliorated in the human form.

Now perhaps we will prove that density and shape itself can be malleable.

3.0

.six days after the upload

"You mentioned easy women," Mercer said neutrally, sitting by the edge of the bed and ostensibly studying Cross' palm, tracing the life line with the edge of a nail. "Earlier."

"So I did." Mercer could sense uncertainty or fear, Cross reminded himself, and forced himself to stay relaxed.

"So are you actually gay, or bi, or an old pervert?"

"Going by the evidence, it's probably Option A," Cross said dryly, recalling the folder. "I never did see any women, easy or otherwise."

"But you said-"

"You don't know what it was like being in the military – even a black ops outfit like Blackwatch – before 2010." Cross interrupted, then tried to take the sharpness from his tone with a lopsided smile. "Wasn't all fun if you didn't work the right side of the fence."

"I thought a black ops program wouldn't have cared all that much. Especially since you weren't exactly allowed to quit."

"I didn't know the last part of that statement until recently," Cross reminded Mercer. "Before that, it was just another military outfit to me – if a pretty damned good one, stabilizer matters aside – that I didn't want to quit. And if I didn't want to quit, I had to follow the rules."

"Then for forty years you didn't have anyone?" Mercer looked all too human when he was startled.

"Nothing permanent. It wasn't just the situation. I didn't have the time." Cross said flatly, trying to dissuade Zeus from further questions, feeling uncomfortable. Blackwatch had been one long series of skirmishes followed by long stints in various labs and a few pockets of monitored spare time. It was easier to go out with the team and drink than to consider trying to make time for a love life.

"All right." Mercer's narrowed eyes told Cross that Zeus wasn't letting it go. "Sounds lonely."

"Maybe it was. It's old history now." Cross said slowly, as Mercer stroked soft thumbs up over the sensitive flesh between his fingers. "Come a little closer."

Mercer ignored him, turning his hand palm down, studying the outline of veins under his skin with teasing fingertips. "And then there was me."

"Is this turning biblical?" He kept his tone teasing.

"I've looked through the memories. DADT's been repealed for two years, but not everything's changed. People still go through shit in their unit sometimes if their comrades find out that they're on the other side of the fence. They don't report it because they don't want to snitch. Either they're scared of losing their career, or if their partner's also in the military, they're scared for their partner." Mercer shot him a sidelong glance. "You've picked someone pretty much invincible and off the grid."

"Those weren't the reasons."

"This face is Alex Mercer's," Mercer tapped at his own chin with a finger. "It's stolen. The armor's probably the closest I've got to a real face."

"The armor isn't that bad," Cross quipped, then added, as Mercer's expression darkened, "That's no longer the reason either."

Cross gently tugged at Mercer's wrist until he huffed and shifted over to straddle his hips over the blanket, hands fisted in the pillows beside Cross' head, snorting as Cross pulled him carefully down into an embrace, shifting to nuzzle the specialist's neck, scenting. There was a coiled tension to Mercer's shoulders that spoke of the ever-present potential for lethal violence, and Cross couldn't deny that it excited him.

Maybe there was a little more to Option C than he'd thought.

Thankfully, Mercer didn't press the point further. Cross was out of explanations for his attraction, and explaining it on instincts was trite. "How much longer until you're better, old man?"

"Probably a couple of days."

"How good are you right now?"

"If I roll us over right now I might start bleeding." A pause. "And before you say you'll like that, I should mention that this would probably accompany me passing out."

"Tch." Mercer reared up onto his elbows, his grin mischievous. "Fuck, why did you have to get hurt so badly?"

"Miscalculation," Cross explained, shivering as hips rolled pointedly over his own. Pain spiked over his bandaged wounds, winding in a thorny union with his growing lust; the blanket felt too thick now, over his thighs. "Mercer."

"I guess you could let me do the work," Mercer's grin widened at his reaction. "And then make it up to me next time."

"I think I recall what happened the last time I let you do all the work, and this place is rented."

"We can start off on the floor if you like," Mercer drawled, picking at the collar of his shirt (probably stolen), smirking as Cross gasped as he felt the pad of his thumb run up over his jugular. "You can lie back and think of the fucking union jack or whatever rocks your boat."

"I think I'll manage," Cross returned in a low growl, curling fingers over the nape of Mercer's neck, hips bucking up as fingers squeezed him hard over the blanket. A black claw sliced through blanket and the thin fabric of his pants, and Cross moaned, suddenly breathless, as the smooth arch of the talon rubbed lightly up his firming cock.

IV

scrap from folder confiscated by R. Cross from Blackwatch Confidential materials | circa 1971 | redacted letter | unknown author

D,

My name's up next and I'm not sure if I'll be coming home. The others have given me their letters because I've told them that everything was going to be all right. I don't think I've ever lied in my life until now.

We didn't part on good terms and I know it wasn't all because of the Vietnam deployment. I don't have the time to try and make it up to you even if I knew how to go about doing it. I'm not on speaking terms with most of my family any longer but I know you are (strangely enough). Please let them know that in the end, if this is what the end will be, they were in my thoughts.

If you get some other letters along with this one, please try to get them to their recipients, however crazy a task that might be. I'm not good with sentiment, so I just want to say goodbye. I wish you well.

R

interim report | subject alpha | circa 2000 | doctor b. ragland

Subject Alpha is developing a growing immunity towards the stabilizer which I stress does not impede his function. He does not _need_ the stabilizer any longer. The PARIAH virus within Subject Alpha is evolving and has seemingly fully assimilated. Subject Alpha's blood is showing signs of rejecting the chemical cocktail within the A-49581 stabilizer.

The A-50111 stabilizer is intended only for cases of catatonic shock within Subjects and should not be dispensed lightly, _particularly_ by way of creating a form of drug dependence. Subject Alpha has shown no signs of disloyalty to Blackwatch and weaning him onto A-50111, which we are well aware contains morphine, would be a gross form of medical negligence and worse.

Should I be advised again to administer A-50111 to Subject Alpha I must respectfully offer my resignation. This is not the sole reason for my dissatisfaction with what is otherwise a state of the art facility for research. The REDLIGHT virus strain is beginning to cause me some concern. Preliminary data reports indicate that in no regard would it ever be (as purported) a potential cure for cancer. Instead, it has the potential to be the single most destructive global epidemic in all of recorded history-

4.0

.five months after the upload

When the phone in his jacket buzzed, Cross smiled apologetically at the Chief of Staff, bowed to the President, and motioned towards the exit of the Situation Room. Intent on the television screens and bombarded by phone calls and encrypted feeds, the President offered him a tired wave and a nod before sinking back into his chair, crossing his legs.

Once outside, mindful of the watchful stares from the Secret Service, Cross picked up. "Cross."

"Seen the news?"

"Yeah. How are you holding up?"

"I'm fine." Mercer sounded jaunty, but then, it wasn't always that one managed to single-handedly end a couple of wars through brute force and scare tactics. "You don't sound like unicorns and fucking rainbows. Somebody rained on our parade?"

"It's the twenty first century. It's not kosher to express delight over the results of war," Cross pointed out dryly. "Particularly since nobody's really certain whether the Iraq invasion was legal in the first place. A hell lot of people died on both sides. Right now we're probably working on condolences and mutual extensions of support, that sort of thing."

"The army can finish pulling out this week, the President can win his second election term – not that I'm sure why the fuck he wants to do it after everything he's gone through over the past four years, maybe he likes pain," Mercer retorted. "And I can finally get out of this bloody dust bowl. As far as I can tell, that's hell of enough reason for a fucking parade. How's Dana."

"Dana's doing great. Likes her new job." Dana was one of the junior assistants in the First Lady's staff, albeit under another name, and so far seemed to enjoy the experience. It was certainly a sight better than constantly being in danger, perhaps. "Pickup's in 0800 hours."

"And you'll be at the usual place?"

"Depending on what time you get back."

"Good," Mercer said, with evident satisfaction. "By the way, I think after all the shit I've been through for your fucking sake over the last week, _you_ should be the one taking it up your ass."

"Well," Cross coughed, all too aware of his current location, "That was always an option on the table, as it were."

"What… really?"

"Alex," Cross said dryly, "I always thought you'd push it earlier."

"And you'd have _agreed_?"

"Why not?"

There was a long pause, then a sputtered, "God _damn_," and a growl. "Fuck. The pickup had better be on time."

"Be seeing you, Alex," Cross chuckled, then added, as an agent peered out from the Situation Room and motioned for him, "I have to go."

"Be seeing _you_," Mercer purred, all heat and dark promise, and Cross rasped his teeth absently over suddenly dry lips as he hung up and slipped the phone back into his jacket.

Back inside the Situation Room, the President looked him over, long fingers clasped over his lap. Behind him, on multiple screens, different news agencies reported excitedly on the surrender of the Shia-led insurgence militias and the seeming disappearance of the Taliban and Al-Qaeda forces.

"He's effective," the Chief of Staff said bluntly, and the President winced, assuming the same pained expression he wore whenever discussing Mercer. Behind his chair, the Vice President scowled. "That's a fucking hell lot of soldiers we can pull back in time for the vote. Pretty little news items."

"That wasn't what this was about, Rahm," The President said dryly.

"Yeah, sorry, I meant also a lot of happy motherfucking 'coming home' videos with crazy mutts hitting the Internet on Youtube in time for the elections," the Chief of Staff added, without missing a beat. "Good job, Cross."

"It wasn't me," Cross said honestly, studying the CNN screen. Several dark plumes of smoke were rising out from a set of sun-baked mountains. "Sir."

"A lot of men and women will be coming home, finally," the President toyed with his Blackberry, tapping buttons and rubbing his fingers through his cropped hair. "No more casualties. The war chest can be used to repay some of our debt. We can finally reallocate troops into peacekeeping and disaster recovery efforts. That's what we needed. Gibbs, I need a press conference within the hour. You're going to have to say something during it, Director. Not about Zeus in particular, I'm afraid. I doubt America's ready for him yet."

Cross blinked. "Me?"

"Well, con-fucking-gratulations," the Chief of Staff smirked. "I guess you're off probation."

"Thanks," Cross said dryly. "Assuming you guys win in the next month or so."

"Oh, fuck you too."

"I'm confident," the President said, untroubled. "There's one more thing, Cross. Rahm tells me you have a certain folder, from the Blackwatch files."

"Yes, sir," Cross said warily.

"Give me a copy. Not the original, if you want to keep that. I want to read it."

"Mr. President-" The Chief of Staff began impatiently.

"No, Rahm. I think I need to know. And maybe some things shouldn't be forgotten or buried." The President grinned as the Chief of Staff began to turn slowly red with fury. "It's the anniversary of the repeal, and I have some capital to spend from the war."

"I'm going to _fucking_ quit!"

"That's what you said last week," Cross observed, folding his hands behind his back. "Sir."

"You shut the _hell_ up."

Cross raised his hands up in a gesture of mock surrender, and the President chuckled. "Just let me think about it, Rahm. Go work on your speech, Cross. I want to vet it in twenty minutes. Showtime in an hour."

"Yes, sir." At the edges of his vision, there was a brief flash of gray, but Cross ignored it. Two hours left to crawl on by, and then he had a plane to catch.

-fin-

[Inspired by stories from the frontlines:

.org/blog/archives/stories-from-the-frontlines-a-love-letter-from-a-soldier/

.org/blog/c/letters

Links above won't be visible to FFnet. If you're curious, google 'service members legal defense network stories from the frontlines'. Andrew Sullivan also posts readers' stories on his blog. There have been some really disturbing ones about silent abuse.

In other news, I just watched Prince of Persia, aka Movie about Persian King with 3 Hot Sons. Anyone lol during the Hashashin part? So much potential for an AC crossover. Tus + Dastan + Garsiv will definitely give the Auditore brothers a run for their money on any catwalk. : ) See further here: .com/media/rm234652160/tt0473075

As to whether it gives any fic bunnies, that's always a possibility, heh.]


End file.
